Cizeron, M. et al Science 369, 270—275 (2020)

Synapses are structures in the nervous system that enable communication between neurons. Healthy synapses contribute to learning and memory, while those that go awry can lead to a number of neurological disorders, many of which tend to arise at characteristic ages, such as autism in toddlers, schizophrenia in young adults, and dementia in elderly individuals.

To explore how the synaptome changes with age, researchers at the University of Edinburgh recently published the Mouse Lifespan Synaptome Atlas. Looking at 10 age cohorts, from day-old newborns to 18-month old aged animals, and using fluorescent markers to tag billions of excitatory synapses in different areas of the animals’ brains, the team documented age-dependent changes in variables such as synapse number, composition, and morphology across the mouse lifespan. In the mice, these differences broadly correspond to childhood & adolescence, young adulthood, and old adulthood.