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Neural ageing is the process by which neural cells in the brain and peripheral nervous system deteriorate structurally and functionally over time. It is associated with a decline in sensory, motor and cognitive functions of the brain.
How synapses at dendrites are organized to optimize information processing remains elusive. Here, the authors found that intracellular magnesium optimizes transmission, plasticity, and coding capacity of synapses by reconfiguring their connectivity at dendrites.
Zhao, Liu et al. investigate the relationship between cognitive decline, chronic musculoskeletal pain and brain structure using an algorithm that can detect deviations from normative brain aging.
A synaptic neuron and astrocyte program (SNAP) varies among healthy humans, may shape interindividual differences in synapses and plasticity, and is undermined in schizophrenia and with advancing age.
In mice, a subset of neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamus control sympathetic nervous system signalling to adipose tissue and are dysregulated with age; activating these neurons prolongs lifespan and slows the decline in physical activity associated with ageing.
Around 10% of individuals with frontotemporal lobar dementia have amyloid filament inclusions that lack tau and TDP-43 and were thought to contain the protein FUS, but are found instead to contain the FUS homologue TAF15.
Senescent cells in the brain contribute to age-related neurodegeneration. Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infection in human brain organoids, animals and post-mortem brain samples from patients with COVID-19 reveals virus-induced senescence. Pharmacological senolytic treatment following SARS-CoV-2 infection improves COVID-19 neuropathology and could help to protect people from long COVID.
Neuronal aging is highly associated with misfolded protein aggregates that predispose to neurodegeneration, but the cellular factors that are involved in removing misfolded proteins are yet to be identified. In this issue of Nature Aging, Li and colleagues identified LONRF2 as an important player in protecting aging neurons against the accumulation of protein aggregates.
The number of neural stem cells in the brain decreases with age, which in the dentate gyrus of older mice is associated with a lower SIRT7-mediated mitochondrial unfolded protein response and reduced neural stem cell maintenance and neurogenesis.
