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Bold mice yield a clue about anxiety

By Carolyn Y. Johnson

 |  Globe Staff  

  December 12, 2011

Spurred by interest in the role proteins involved in longevity might play in protecting against neurodegenerative disease, MIT researchers began routine tests of learning and memory in mice whose brains lacked the proteins, called sirtuins. Instead, they found the mice were surprisingly anxiety-free. So instead of studying memory, the researchers designed a slate of experiments that could unravel the source of the fearlessness they observed. They reported last week in the journal Cell that the longevity protein also appears to control anxiety and exploratory behavior.

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