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Neural mechanisms of ageing and cognitive decline

Abstract

During the past century, treatments for the diseases of youth and middle age have helped raise life expectancy significantly. However, cognitive decline has emerged as one of the greatest health threats of old age, with nearly 50% of adults over the age of 85 afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Developing therapeutic interventions for such conditions demands a greater understanding of the processes underlying normal and pathological brain ageing. Recent advances in the biology of ageing in model organisms, together with molecular and systems-level studies of the brain, are beginning to shed light on these mechanisms and their potential roles in cognitive decline.

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Figure 1: Altered functional activation of brain systems during brain ageing.
Figure 2: Evolutionary changes in gene regulation in the brain during ageing.
Figure 3: Conserved pathways that regulate organismal and brain ageing.
Figure 4: The brain as a potential regulator of organismal ageing.

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Acknowledgements

We apologize for the many studies and references that could not be included owing to space limitations. Our work is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the US National Institutes of Health, the Ellison Medical Foundation and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research.

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Reprints and permissions information is available at http://www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Correspondence should be addressed to B.A.Y. (bruce_yankner@hms.harvard.edu).

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Bishop, N., Lu, T. & Yankner, B. Neural mechanisms of ageing and cognitive decline. Nature 464, 529–535 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08983

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