Scientists Seek to Discover Why Some Minds Resist the Damage That Comes With Old Age

Researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) are investigating why certain older adults retain their youthful cognition, despite evidence of neurodegeneration or Alzheimer's-related pathology in the brain, reports Forbes . They are studying cognitive reserve, which focuses on the mind's resistance to brain damage. Brainstorming among various scientists led to a recommended lifelong study of rats, to produce state-of-the-art neuroimaging, phenotypic results, and non-invasive biological samples to gain knowledge on what drives healthy neurocognitive aging. The NIA says this study, Successful Trajectories of Aging: Reserve and Resilience in RatS (STARRS), will be an open source dataset and sample hub to be shared with the aging science community. "NIA-supported scientists aim to study reserve at the cellular level and establish baseline data to evaluate how various interventions might impact brain aging and the ability to compensate for dementia pathology," said the NIA's Peter Rapp.