Health · Medical Research · 2 hrs ago
Boosting a Brain Protein Restores Memory in Alzheimer’s-Like Mice
Researchers at Gladstone Institutes boosted a brain protein in mice engineered to develop Alzheimer’s-like disease.
The change restored brain rhythms and improved memory in the mice.
These rhythms, called gamma oscillations, help the brain focus, learn and retrieve memories.
The study found that brain cells lost their normal firing sequence in the mice, with more cells firing together and weakening the rhythms.
The findings offer a possible treatment strategy for Alzheimer’s based on restoring how brain cells coordinate, but they do not show that the approach works in people.
The researchers say the link between disrupted cell activity and epilepsy-like signals also needs investigation in humans.
Researchers at Gladstone Institutes found that boosting a brain protein restored gamma rhythms and improved memory in mice with Alzheimer’s-like disease.
The study found that parvalbumin interneurons in the mice lost the timed firing sequence that helps generate these rhythms.
In the Alzheimer’s-like mice, more cells fired together, but the gamma rhythms weakened.
The researchers tracked electrical rhythms and individual cell activity in awake mice.
The findings point to a possible treatment strategy focused on how brain cells coordinate their activity.
- Who
- Researchers at Gladstone Institutes, including study senior author Jorge J. Palop and first author Keran Ma.
- What
- They found that boosting a brain protein restored gamma rhythms and improved memory in mice with Alzheimer’s-like disease.
- When
- The study was published in Neuron. The article was published on October 19, 2026.
- Where
- In awake mice studied by the Gladstone Institutes team.
- Why
- The researchers aimed to understand how brain cells coordinate to generate gamma rhythms and how that coordination breaks down in Alzheimer’s-like disease.
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- Study institution
- Gladstone Institutes
- Publication
- Neuron
- Brain cells studied
- Parvalbumin (PV) interneurons
- Gamma rhythm frequency
- 30 to 90 cycles per second
- Mice studied
- Awake mice engineered to develop Alzheimer’s-like disease
What people are saying
What makes this discovery so exciting is that we didn’t just figure out how healthy cells pass the baton; we discovered a way to reset their timing when Alzheimer’s related processes throw them off beat.
The important thing here is that more activity is not always going to produce better oscillations or better cognition.
Until now, no one has actually been able to image these cells and look at gamma oscillations at the same time in an awake animal during natural behavior.