Potential correlation between aging mice brain and susceptibility to ‘sunken costs’

            

Through the process of aging there is a gradual, but noticeable decline from a biological perspective. In a study from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center called, “Young bone marrow rejuvenates aging mouse brains” Das et al. investigate the possibility of young bone marrow potentially reversing the effects that aging has on the brain. Specifically, the deterioration of synapses in the hippocampus that are needed for cognition, memory retrieval, and learning.

          With the decline of an aging mouse brain per the paper, there is a decline in cognitive behavior as well as degradation of memory and learning abilities. There is potential that young bone marrow compared to old bone marrow could strengthen and reverse the degradation of these abilities within the brains of the mouse.

While reading this experiment, I saw it had similar elements to the paper by Sweis et al, “Sensitivity to ‘sunk costs’ in mice, rats, and humans”. Sweis’s paper focuses on the aspects of “sunk costs” referring to the continuation of an activity due to time and/or effort having already being committed to it. As mentioned in his talk and his paper, “The amount of time spent waiting increases commitment to continuing reward pursuit”. With the decline through the process of aging, a mouse brain should begin to succumb to these sunken costs due to decline in memory and learning ability. There would not be that ‘reward’ gratification due to the decrease in memory and learning abilities. This could potentially imply that through the aging of a mouse brain, the mouse would be prone to spend more time waiting for gratification and not learning from the past experiences due to decrease in learning abilities. Therefore, the use of young bone marrow in regard to rejuvenating a mouse brain could hypothetically facilitate with a mice’s decision when it comes to “sunken costs”.

Those with a strengthened learning ability and memory would be able more likely to give up on the reward after a period of time, compared to the mice that have not been treated with young bone marrow and therefore would not have re-strengthened their memory and learning abilities. An aging mice brain treated with young bone marrow could lead to adaptation and separating from sunken costs. While an untreated mouse brain could mean a weakened hypothalamus and therefore inability to adapt from the sunken costs and find a more efficient reward system.

Citations:

Melanie M. Das, Marlesa Godoy, Shuang Chen, V. Alexandra Moser, Pablo Avalos, Kristina M. Roxas, Ivy Dang, Alberto Yáñez, Wenxuan Zhang, Catherine Bresee, Moshe Arditi, George Y. Liu, Clive N. Svendsen, Helen S. Goodridge. Young bone marrow transplantation preserves learning and memory in old mice. Communications Biology, 2019; 2 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0298-5

Sensitivity to ''sunk costs'' in mice, rats, and humans

Brian M. Sweis, Samantha V. Abram, Brandy J. Schmidt, Kelsey D. Seeland, Angus W. MacDonald III, Mark J. Thomas and A. David Redish