Fed: Psychologist quests to patch-up memory

AAP General News (Australia)
04-13-2004
Fed: Psychologist quests to patch-up memory

By Kylie Walker, National Medical Correspondent

SYDNEY, April 13 AAP - Achieving great exam results or remembering names and dates
could soon be as easy as slapping on a patch, if an Australian psychologist achieves his
dream of a long-term memory booster.

Rod Markham, director of the Australian Centre for Neuropsychotherapy, is working on
a nicotine patch-like product which would deliver an array of memory enhancing substances
through the skin to the base of the brain.

"Say military personnel have to learn a new language before they go in as peacekeepers
in another country, they slap one of these things on the back of their neck and within
an hour it starts kicking in and then they'll be able to absorb more information more
quickly," Mr Markham said.

"The idea is that it is not to have any side effects and it's going to be as natural
as possible."

The patch will contain the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which mediates nerve activity,
vitamin E, which has been linked in international studies to the prevention of brain degeneration,
and inositol.

"It's been found that when they inject inositol, which is a form of Vitamin B, into
the brains of damaged rat brains, they actually regrew brain cells," he said.

Mr Markham, whose idea sprang from research into Alzheimer's disease, is designing
the patch to target the hippocampus, the region of the brain that deals with long-term
memory.

"If you put the patch at the neck, it goes via the nervous system and blood to the
brain," Mr Markham said.

"Once it goes in it goes straight to the brain."

However, that claim was disputed by Dr Gavin McNally, a psychology lecturer at the
University of NSW.

"You're not going to be able to deliver anything directly to the brain through that
kind of patch, that's for sure," Dr McNally said.

"It will get absorbed into circulation and it will reach the brain but it's certainly not direct.

"And it's not going to have effects only on the brain regions that are important for
learning and memory, it's going to have effects on other parts of the brain."

In theory, Dr McNally said the patch could work in the same way that a nicotine patch
sends enough nicotine into circulation to quell cravings, but it would likely be too general
to have medical applications.

"In places where memory does suffer - ageing, certain dementias - it would be fantastic
if we could develop some kind of pharmacological tool to improve memory and quality of
life," he said.

"But I think we've got to be very cautious.

"If you're really talking about using some kind of pharmacological manipulation to
facilitate memory then you want it to be targeted as precisely as possible."

AAP kbw/

KEYWORD: MEMORY

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