Science: How does the brain get old? 5 billion brain cell connection points that reveal life-long brain changes

A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh recently presented an amazing set of brain images in the leading academic journal ScienceThese images depict the details of the five billion nerve cell connectionpoints in the entire brain at different ages of lifeScientists believe the map will provide clues about brain aging, shed light on how memories are affected by age, and provide insightinto into learning disabilities and dementiathe "main characters" in these brain images are called synapses, which are important connections between nerve cells, transmitting electrical signals and chemical signals that form the brain's neural loopsThe innate behavior of animals and the behavior of the learned after life are controlled by the molecular composition of synapsesChanges in synapses are the basis for memory formation and storage, and synaptic damage is known to be associated with more than 130 brain diseasesIn this work, using the resolution of a single synaptic, the researchers analyzed the molecular diversity and morphological diversity of the excitatory synapses in the entire brain from birth to adulthood to old age in mice, and compared how synapses in each brain region changed during the main mouse life stage"The brain is the most complex thing we know, and understanding it at this level is a major step forward." Professor Seth Grant, lead author of the study, said the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Clinical Brain Scienceresearchers labeled the proteins expressed in synapses separately with different fluorescent markers, allowing them to distinguish the molecular composition of different synapses or mark the number of different types of synapsescan be seen in the image that the synaptic composition of all regions of the brain changes continuously throughout lifeIn adult mice, the image color is most abundant, meaning that synapses are most diverseIn contrast, very young and very old brains have fewer synapses and less complexityresearchers at the University of Edinburgh, we can explore why genes cause synaptic damage at a specific age and in a particular brain region through the space-time changes in these synaptic compositionsSchizophrenia often begins at puberty, and dementia usually affects older people, "we believe these findings will help to understand why the brain is susceptible to specific diseases at different times in life and how it changes with age." Professor Grant said(
BiovalleyBioon.com)