Memory Enhancing Property of Santalum album L. on Mice

A lot of medicinal plants, traditionally used for thousands of years, are present in a group of herbal preparations of the Indian traditional health care system (Ayurveda) named Rasayana proposed for their interesting anti-oxidant activities. But the recent study suggests that herbal drugs have a complex pathology to cure Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is an age related neuro degenerative condition associated with cognitive. Among the different plants, one of them has been specially investigated that they have the Anti-oxidant property. A number of plants constitute the Anti-oxidant activity, in which one of them is “Santalum album L.”. It was described in one of the siddha system that S. album possesses the property of increasing the memory and cognitive. And also in the Ayurvedic formulation Smruthi leha also described that S.album having the property to decrease dementia in older people. Male albino mice of weighing around 15–20 gm which are one month old were taken for study. The mice were divide into seven groups, in each group a minimum of six animals are taken. They are induce with β-amyloid protein for memory loss. These memory lossed animals are treated with the alcoholic extract of Santalum album L. for a period of 30 days. Then the enzyme estimation is performed on these mice. The results shows that the Santalum album has the property of increased enzyme levels. That it gives the conclusion that Santalum album L. is having the memory enhancing property.