Bees Can Reverse Brain Aging

Honey bee is one of the smartest 
insects. A honey bee can learn 
complex connections between 
time, odors, colors, shapes and 
positive or negative experiences. 
Honey bees can also understand 
numbers up to and including 4. 
(Picture from: http://livasperiklis.com/)

Mindset was to determine the length of the honey bee age. Scientists at Arizona State University, and Norwegian University of Life Sciences, led by Gro Amdam, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, presented findings that show that tricking older, foraging bees into doing social tasks inside the nest causes changes in the molecular structure of their brains.

"Honeybees are relatively preserved during its stay in the nest and care for larvae (baby bees). But they ripen very quickly so get through this," said Gro Amdam. The research is published in the journal Experimental Gerontology.

During experiments, scientists removed all of the younger nurse bees from the nest - leaving only the queen and babies.

When the older, foraging bees returned to the nest, activity diminished for several days. Then, some of the old bees returned to searching for food, while others cared for the nest and larvae.

Young bees take care of larvae. A bee 
larvae looks somewhat like a croissant, 
and each baby has her own hexagonal 
compartment inside the nest of the 
colony. The young bees patrol the nest 
and inspect each compartment to 
clean and feed the larvae. (Picture 
from: http://www.sott.net/)

Researchers discovered that after 10 days, about 50 percent of the older bees caring for the nest and larvae had significantly improved their ability to learn new things.

Seeing these differences, the scientists decided to compare the scanned their brains. They found elevated levels of protein in the brains of bees Prx6 treating larvae.

Prx6 protein is also found in humans and is known to have important functions to
protect brain function against disease, including dementia and Alzheimer's.

Prx6 protein being studied, says Amdam, can spontaneously respond to certain social experiences. These findings are very useful for humans. Because honey bees have a similar brain cells with humans. Humans can learn from honeybees on how to adjust the social life to help the mind, so stay young as they grow older.

"Social intervention is something we can do today to help your brain stay young," says Amdam. "Change the way you relate to your environment."

Bees, like humans, are unable to live alone. Bees will experience stress and usually will not survive more than 7-10 days in isolation rooms. "Honeybees are also included social animals, like humans," says Amdam. *** [DAILYMAIL | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 3935]

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