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This book brings together most up-to-date information on different aspects of brain aging and on the strategies for intervention and therapy of age-related brain disorders. It includes 18 chapters by leading researchers, and each chapter is a comprehensive and critical review of the topic in question, discusses the current scenario and focuses on future perspectives. The target readership is the undergraduate and graduate students in the universities, in medical and nursing colleges, along with the post-graduate researchers and practicing clinicians who would like to know about the latest developments in the field of neurodegenerative disorders and their therapeutic interventions. This book will be of much interest to pharmaceutical, nutrition and healthcare industry for an easy access to accurate and reliable information in the field of aging research and intervention.
This book first reviews the case that brain oscillations not only are important for cognition, as long suspected, but also play a part in the expression of signs and symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders. The cellular mechanisms of many of the clinically relevant oscillations have been studied by the authors and their colleagues, using in vitro slice methods as well as detailed computer simulations. A surprising insight is that gap junctions between principal neurons play an absolutely critical role in so many types of oscillation in neuronal populations; oscillations are not just the result of properties of individual neurons and their synaptic connections. Furthermore, the way in which gap junctions produce oscillations in the cortex is novel, involving as it does global properties of networks, rather than just the time constants of membrane currents. This insight has implications for therapeutics as well as for our understanding of normal brain functions.
Oscillatory brain activities reflect and affect network activities in the brain. They support many physiological functions from motor control to cognition and emotion. Abnormal oscillatory brain activities are commonly observed in neurological and psychiatric disorders including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, anxiety/trauma-related disorders, major depressive disorders, addiction, etc. Therefore, these disorders can be considered as common oscillation defects “oscillopathies” despite having distinct behavioral manifestations. Recent advances in brain activity measurements and analyses have allowed us to study the pathological oscillations of each disorder as a possible biomarker of symptoms. Furthermore, novel brain stimulation technologies will enable time- and space-targeted interventions of the pathological oscillations of both neurological and psychiatric disorders as possible therapeutic targets for regulating their symptoms. This Research Topic focused on understanding and controlling pathological oscillations in the brain will provide a comprehensive overview of pathological oscillations in neurological and psychiatric disorders. This Research Topic will also examine correlations or causal relationships between pathological oscillations and the symptoms of disorders with a view to the possible use of oscillations as biomarkers or therapeutic targets. Good animal models that accurately reflect neurological and psychiatric symptoms of patients are necessary for providing the proof-of-concept toward future translational research. Large-scale recording and reliable decoding technologies are crucial for discovering the correlations between pathological oscillations and some symptoms, while time- and space-targeted intervention technologies are necessary for studying their causal relationships, Such data will eventually allow the development of neuroprosthesis devices for pathological oscillations. Revealing the mechanisms of physiological oscillations is also important for the direction of this topic.
This issue examines what is a healthy aging brain and covers preventive measures for succesful cognitive aging. Topics covered include: A road map to healthy aging brain; Cardiovascular risk factors, cerebrovascular disease burden and healthy aging brain; Healthy aging brain: Impact of head injury, alcohol and environmental toxins; Healthy aging brain: What has sleep go to do with it?; Endocrine aspects of healthy aging brain; Healthy aging brain: Role of exercise and physically active lifestyle; Healthy aging brain: Role of nutrition and nutritional supplements; Healthy aging brain: Role of cognitive reserve, cognitive stimulation and cognitive exercises; Healthy aging brain: Impact of positive and negative emotions; Dementia risk predictor. Are we there yet?; Potential future neuroprotective therapies for neurodegenerative disorders and stroke; Healthy aging brain: Importance of promoting resilience and creativity.
A distinguished panel of internationally recognized neuroscientists comprehensively review the involvement of and changes in glial cells both during the normal aging process and in the major disorders of old age. Topics range from the cellular and molecular changes that occur with aging-especially aging-associated activation of astrocytes and microglia and its relation to neuronal injury and repair-to neuron-glia intercommunication. The contributors show how glial signals may be modulated by hormones, growth factors, neurotransmitters, intracellular metabolism, and intercellular exchanges, as well as by aging of the blood-brain barrier.
Old adults undertake multiple reduced cognitive abilities in aging, which are accompanied with specific brain reorganization in forms of regional brain activity and brain tissues, inter-region connectivity, and topology of whole brain networks in both function and structure. The plasticity changes of brain activities in old adults are explained by the mechanisms of compensation and dedifferentiation. For example, older adults have been observed to have greater, usually bilateral, prefrontal activities during memory tasks compared to the typical unilateral prefrontal activities in younger adults, which was explained as a compensation for the reduced brain activities in visual processing cortices. Dedifferentiation is another mechanism to explain that old adults are with much less selective and less distinct activity in task-relevant brain regions compared with younger adults. A larger number of studies have examined the plasticity changes of brain from the perspective of regional brain activities. However, studies on only regional brain activities cannot fully elucidate the neural mechanisms of reduced cognitive abilities in aging, as multiple regions are integrated together to achieve advanced cognitive function in human brain. In recent years, brain connectivity/network, which targets how brain regions are integrated, have drawn increasing attention in neuroscience with the development of neuroimaging techniques and graph theoretical analysis. Connectivity quantifies functional association or neural fibers between two regions that may be spatially far separated, and graph theoretical analysis of brain network examines the complex interactions among multiple regions from the perspective of topology. Studies showed that compared to younger adults, older adults had altered strength of task-relevant functional connectivity between specific brain regions in cognitive tasks, and the alternation of connectivity are correlated to behavior performance. For example, older adults had weaker functional connectivity between the premotor cortex and a region in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a working memory task. Interventions like cognitive training and neuro-modulation (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation) have been shown to be promising in regaining or retaining the decreasing cognitive abilities in aging. However, only few neuroimaging studies have examined the influence of interventions to old adult’s brain activity, connectivity, and cognitive performance. This Research Topic calls for contributions on brain network of subjects in normal aging or with age-related diseases like mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The studies are expected to be based on neuroimaging techniques including but not limited to functional magnetic resonance imaging, Electroencephalography, and diffusion tensor imaging, and contributions on the influence of interventions to brain networks in aging are highly encouraged. All these studies would enrich our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying aging, and offer new insights for developing possible interventions to retain cognitive abilities in aging subjects.
When confronted with a neurological or psychiatric disorder in an elderly individual, a clinician or researcher is likely to ask how the processes of ageing have influenced the aetiology and presentation of the disorder, and will impact on its efficient management. There are many urban myths about ageing, and some of these apply to the brain. The r
Experimental gerontopsychology attempts to test causal hypotheses about old age-related behavioral changes by the manipulation of age-differences. An experimental treatment is introduced with the purpose of equating different age-groups with respect to a potentially relevant function. If the treatment results in an assimilation of the behavior of the different age-groups (age by-treatment interaction), differences in this function are con sidered as causal for the normally observed behavioral differ ence. If it does not result in an assimilation of the behavior of the different age-groups (main effect of treatment), differ ences in this function are considered as irrelevant for the nor mally observed behavioral difference. The different interpretations of age-by-treatment interactions and main effects of treatment in this kind of research are reasonable only if the experimental treatment actually results in an equalization of the age-groups with respect to the func tion of interest. As is shown, such a functional equalization can neither be demonstrated nor assumed in many cases. In such cases, studies with either age-group can be used to investigate hypotheses about potential causes for old age-related behavioral changes, studies with young subjects having important advantages over studies with old subjects. A test of causal relationships by age-by-treatment interactions is possible in cases where the experimental treatment evidently results in an equalization of the age groups with respect to the function in question. Unfortunately, the field of application for this kind of approach is rather limited.