Concerned about your memory? New research has found that increasing histamine levels in your brain might help your long-term memory.
Understanding histamine
Most of us know histamine for its role in allergies. But it also helps regulate the functions of your gut and serves as a neurotransmitter in your brain. That’s why we take antihistamines—drugs that reduce histamine levels—during allergy season.
But there are also drugs that increase histamine levels, which are often used to treat dizziness. It’s these histamine-boosting drugs that may be used to help memory someday.
New research on histamines and memory
A new study from the University of Tokyo asked 38 participants in their mid-20 to memorize images of everyday objects. Then they had the men and women come back several days later to look at more images. Some were those they had seen previously, others were new images added to the mix.
About a week later, the participants returned and took either a drug that increased histamine levels in their brain or a placebo. Then they took the test again.
How histamine helped
The histamine helped boost long-term memory for the men and women with poorer memories but those who already had a good memory actually saw a decrease after taking the histamines.
How would histamine affect the participants in two very different ways?
According to the researchers, there’s something called “stochastic resonance” which helps boost signals that are too weak for a sensor to detect. The theory is that stored memories that are normally inaccessible can be retrieved once histamines help trigger the neurons.
But for those who already have firing neurons, the histamine produces too much “white noise” that hinders memory recall.
Professor Yuji Ikegaya has a warning for people who are thinking about trying to get a histamine-boosting drug to improve their memory: “To any students thinking about using this drug as a study aid, I must warn them to first always protect their health, and second, to realize that we have not tested whether this drug helps anyone learn or memorize new things.”
