Discovery that Tiny Mammal ‘Regrows’ Its Brain May Help Cure Alzheimer’s
- Editor OGN Daily
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
As part of its survival strategy, scientists find that the common shrew can shrink itself during the winter.
Whilst we all know that bears reduce their mass over winter, using up their fat stores during hibernation, some mammals can go a stage further and actively shrink their skeletons, skulls and brains by 20 percent or more as cold conditions advance. To date, this has been observed in shrews, European moles, stoats and weasels.
All of these animals have a high metabolic rate and do not hibernate, meaning they need high-energy food sources to sustain them whatever the season. Shrinking themselves also shrinks their food demands in winter, when resources are scarce.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany have discovered more about this reversible process using MRI scans of common shrews. They found that the shrews’ brain cells lose water but crucially do not die, meaning that the animals retain their brain function.
It is hoped that further research in this area could inform medical treatments for humans suffering neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, that involve brain volume decline due to water loss.
“The next step is to learn how shrews regrow their brains so that we might find ways to teach human brains to do the same,” says one of the study’s authors (and expert in human brain disease at Aalborg University, Denmark), John Nieland.
The common shrew (Sorex araneus), also known as the Eurasian shrew, is (as its name implies) the most common shrew, and one of the most common mammals, throughout Northern Europe. The shrew family has 385 known species, making it the fourth-most species-diverse mammal family.
