Getting medical help from our furry friends

In search of ponies

link Sharna Johnson

When the days are shorter, the dark is longer and it’s cold outside, avoiding the whole shebang seems like it would be the best thing in the world.

It’s easy to see how it would be great to find a nice cozy nook to hide in, hunker down and sleep through the whole frozen mess until the sun comes back to warm the world again.

Humans joke about it and sometimes even covet the practice, but sadly, only a few animals truly get the pleasure of hibernating.

Many critters — humans arguably included — do experience a slow-down during the winter months for obvious reasons. Cold temperatures can be oppressive and serve as a deterrent and for those who survive on hunting and foraging, food supplies are limited, so there is less motivation to operate at full tilt.

However, true hibernation — the body’s core temperature drops and the creature experiences suppression of metabolic activity, lapsing into a full-system shutdown that essentially renders them comatose — is reserved for a handful of creatures that includes some rodents and bears.

From a mechanical standpoint, hibernation is a pretty complicated thing.

Though the animal appears to be sleeping, the truth is, portions of the body have literally turned off or dropped to levels of minimal function to conserve energy. The heart continues to beat, though at a much slower rate and breathing continues, also much slower, but what is truly fascinating is that brain cells break their connections and are rendered inactive for the duration of the hibernation phase.

Scientists have long been fascinated by hibernation, not just in the process, but particularly in the aftermath because, somehow, it successfully breaks the rules.

In most situations, a prolonged shutdown of brain activity would cause permanent damage, and in humans, conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s are marked by a deterioration of the connections (synapses) between brain cells.

The brains of hibernating animals, however, get broken every winter and as the cold period draws to a close and temperatures rise, they emerge, brains repaired, clicked on and ready to go.

Looking to understand why brains repair themselves after hibernation, yet are unable to in cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s, a team of British scientists studied the process in mice and have announced that what they found may eventually offer help to people suffering from the debilitating diseases.

Healthy mice and those with Alzheimer’s and dementia were cooled and placed in a state of hibernation, then awakened so scientists could monitor their brain activity. What researchers found was that the brain synapses of the healthy mice regenerated when they woke and they returned to normal, however the synapses of the other mice did not.

In findings released this month, the team identified that the repair of connections in the brains of hibernating creatures is possible because of a protein called RBM3, which helps the synapses regenerate once an animal regains consciousness.

The protein, also found in humans, is not present in those who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s and may explain why, when their brain synapses begin to deteriorate, their bodies are unable to repair the damage that eventually progresses to a debilitating point.

The revelation prompted researchers to push further and they found by artificially increasing RBM3 levels they were indeed able to prevent the degradation of brain cells, a finding that offers enormous potential in the research of degenerative brain diseases.

So, while getting to sleep through winter might forever be a pipe dream for humans, it may be the truly miraculous part comes not from the snooze itself, but, rather, from waking up.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:

[email protected]