Neurobiology of Aging and Neurodegeneration Branch

The Neurobiology of Aging and Neurodegeneration Branch fosters research aimed at understanding how the nervous system is affected during normal and pathological aging. Research is supported on the genetic, molecular, cellular, and neural mechanisms underlying changes in the brain and its interaction with other physiological systems.

• Fundamental Neuroscience supports studies on age-related structural and functional changes in the brain, including mechanisms of selective vulnerability and plasticity of neural cells, synapses, and circuits to neurodegeneration. Research is supported on the hallmarks of aging, cellular senescence, genetics/epigenetics/chromatin, DNA damage, cell stress, proteostasis, mitochondria, metabolism, lipid neurobiology, neuroglia, neuroplasticity, neural stem cells/neurogenesis, and cell reprogramming.
• Basic Science of Alzheimer’s Disease supports examination of molecular, cellular, synaptic and circuitry mechanisms, inflammation, proteinopathy, protein polymorphisms, structural biology, and cerebrovasculature in the etiology and pathobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias of aging.
• In Integrative Neurobiology, the focus is on neural mechanisms underlying age-related changes between organ systems and the CNS, on endocrine and immune functions, and on neurodegenerative diseases associated with infectious agents.
• Sleep and Biological Rhythms encompasses age-related studies of epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of sleep disorders of older people and of altered sleep-wake cycles/disordered biorhythmicity and their behavioral and neurodegenerative effects in aging.