As people age, their brains pay the price — inflammation goes up, levels of certain neurotransmitters go down, and the result is a plethora of ailments ranging from memory impairment and depression to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But in a long-term study with implications to treat these and other conditions, researchers have found that an experimental drug, taken chronically, has the ability to stem the effects of aging in the rat brain.

The drug, temporarily designated S18986, interacts with AMPA (short for α- Amino-3-hydroxy-5- methylisoxazole-4- propionic acid, or ampakine) receptors in the brain.

“Nobody had ever looked at the long-term effects of these ampakines on the aging brain,” says McEwen, head of Rockefeller’s Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology. Short-term studies, he notes, had shown that the drug appears to improve aspects of memory, likely by temporarily ramping up AMPA receptors in the hippocampus — the brain’s memory and learning center.