Over the course of life, memory fades with varying degrees, robbing older people of the ability to recollect personal experiences.
University of Alabama at BirminghamAug 7 2024 This progressive, nearly inevitable process has long been hypothesized as a consequence of nature's removal of dendritic spines, a key component of synapses, from brain neurons as they age.
Jeremy Herskowitz, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Neurology and corresponding author of the study Herskowitz and colleagues studied postmortem brain samples from 128 ROSMAP participants. The participants had an average age of 90.5 years at the time of death, with variable cognitive performance scores and Alzheimer's disease-related neuropathology. They all had undergone yearly cognitive testing for episodic memory, visuospatial ability/perceptual orientation, perceptual speed, semantic memory, and working memory.
Related Stories"Targeting pathways that maintain spine head diameter or synaptic strength, rather than pathways that maintain or generate new spines or synapses, could potentially yield greater therapeutic benefits for older adults in preclinical phases of Alzheimer's disease," Herskowitz said.
Dementia Spine Alzheimer's Disease Brain Cortex Medicine Neurology Neuron Neurons Ph Research Synapse
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