A drug that may reverse memory loss

Short-term, or working, memory is often lost due to age, mental illness and long-term treatment with antipsychotic drugs. A Yale study found that an experimental drug provided long-lasting reversal of memory loss in primates, offering hope for humans suffering from working memory loss.

In the study published in the March 17 issue of Science, Yale investigators found that even short-term treatment with the experimental drug ABT-431 reversed memory loss in monkeys that were being administered haloperidol, an antipsychotic compound that causes loss of short-term memory in these animals. The principal investigator for the study, Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry said, “What’s remarkable about this particular drug is that patients would only need to use it for a short period of time to achieve long-lasting effects. Experiments at Yale are investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms of this drug’s actions and it is not currently available for clinical application.”