How do mice find food at the end of a maze? How about people just trying to find their parked cars? These tasks require what’s called spatial learning and memory. Faculty Fellow Saul Villeda of the University of California, San Francisco says that spatial memory governs how we navigate through the environment.

"The way I like to think about it in humans is sort of like when you park your car. Usually I try and find a parking spot with a great view of Golden Gate Bridge. Usually there’s some sort of electric car charger nearby and the elevators. So, I park it in the morning and I come back hours later, and then my brain is going to use those cues— Golden Gate, elevator, electric car charger—to guide me to the car."

Villeda says that as animals naturally age, it takes longer to process these spatial cues. His team has been working on ways to revitalize memory and cognitive ability by giving old mice young blood.

"We used this sort of behavioral maze, and then we injected the blood, and what we saw is a normal animal receiving old blood made more errors, but those animals that were given young blood got much, much better. They looked cognitively younger."