Topic: normal aging

Normal aging is characterized by a decline in several cognitive faculties, including the ability to adapt behavior in response to changing environmental contingencies.This ability, known as behavioral flexibility (BF) can be examined by the attentional set-shifting task (ASST), which has been used in rodent to evaluate cognitive impairment involving dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a core feature of several neuropsychiatric disorders. However, this test has not been used to assess BF in aged mice.We evaluated and compared BF between adult and aged mice with the ASST. Here, rodents l

Olfactory dysfunction is a common aspect of normal aging. It is also an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The olfactory bulb, the first processing station of olfactory information in the brain, receives cholinergic basal forebrain input, as does the neocortex and hippocampus contributing cognition and memory, respectively. This study aimed to clarify (1) the role of cholinergic input to the olfactory bulb in adult and aged rats, (2) the relationship between olfaction and cognitive function in older adults.In both adult and aged rats, under anesthesia, unilateral olfactory nerve stimul

Prospective memory (PM), or memory to perform intended actions delayed to the future, plays a crucial role in daily tasks such as medication adherence. PM deficits commonly occur in normal aging and neurodegenerative diseases, highlighting the importance of understanding the underlying mechanisms to inform potential interventions. Brain regions active during PM tasks include the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior parietal cortex. PM tasks engage attentional networks, and changes in alpha frequency oscillations were observed during PM processing. We hypothesized that these