Summary: A new study reports damage to the blood-brain barrier can cause age related cognitive decline, and sheds light on how we could reverse the aging process in the brain.
Source: CIFAR.
As our brains age, we become more forgetful, more tired and less able to do the cognitive gymnastics of our youth. But what if we could stop the brain from aging? Daniela Kaufer, a professor at UC Berkeley and fellow in the CIFAR Child & Brain Development program, has discovered one of the biological pathways that lead to age-related cognitive decline, and has found clues on how to reverse the aging process in the brain.
It all comes down to the blood-brain barrier, a membrane that separates the brain from blood circulating in the rest of the body. When it gets disrupted – due to trauma or age – proteins leak through that can wreak havoc in the brain.
In a talk on Friday 15 February at the AAAS meeting in Washington DC, Kaufer will be discussing new data from experiments in mice and humans that explain the link between blood-brain barrier disruption and declining cognitive function. She will also present new work showing how even very old brains can be made young again.
Funding: Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, University of California Berkeley funded this study.
Source: Jon Farrow – CIFAR
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: The findings will be presented at 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]CIFAR”Breaks in the Blood-Brain Barrier Can Cause Brains to Get Old Before Their Time.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 14 February 2019.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/bbb-brain-aging-10743/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]CIFAR(2019, February 14). Breaks in the Blood-Brain Barrier Can Cause Brains to Get Old Before Their Time. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved February 14, 2019 from https://neurosciencenews.com/bbb-brain-aging-10743/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]CIFAR”Breaks in the Blood-Brain Barrier Can Cause Brains to Get Old Before Their Time.” https://neurosciencenews.com/bbb-brain-aging-10743/ (accessed February 14, 2019).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
