Effects of age on the central nervous system

Our society is ageing and with increasing age comes the potential burden of increased morbidity. Our nervous systems are intimately involved in allowing us to sense and respond appropriately to the environment around us. As we age our ability to carry out routine tasks is diminished although the extent of these deleterious changes is not the same for everyone. Detriments in CNS function can reduce quality of life and at the extreme affect independence. Our work aims to understand more about the basic biology of CNS ageing and to utilise this information to identify strategies to intervene in the ageing process to maintain CNS function.

Project timeframes

The project began in 2006 and is ongoing.

Project aims

The projects aims

to utilise pre-clinical models to characterise the effects of age on the CNS.
to examine the role played by stress, inflammation and replicative senescence in CNS ageing.
to identify novel targets for drug therapy and lifestyle interventions that can alleviate the effects of age and maintain CNS function into old age.

Project findings and impact

The project found that a reduction in the excitability of neurons with age is due to a switch in the mode of the sodium/calcium exchanger and an age-related increase in the slow afterhyperpolarisation.

We are currently examining the involvement of replicative senescence and low level inflammation as underlying causes of this change.

An increased understanding of the mechanisms that drive CN ageing will provide us with the potential to intervene in this process and so maintain CNS health into old age.

Research team

Lamia Hachoumi

Output

Yeoman MS, Patel BA, Arundell M, Parker K, O'Hare D. . Synapse-specific changes in serotonin signalling contribute to age-related changes in the feeding behaviour of the pond snail, Lymnaea. J Neurochem. 2008 Aug;106(4):1699-709. Epub 2008.

Feng ZP, Zhang Z, van Kesteren RE, Straub VA , van Nierop P, Jin K, Nejatbakhsh N, Goldberg JI, Spencer GE, Yeoman MS, Wildering W, Coorssen JR, Croll RP, Buck LT, Syed NI, Smit AB. Transcriptome analysis of the central nervous system of the mollusc Lymnaea stagnalis. BMC Genomics 10: 451, 2009.

Bhavik Anil Patel, Martin Arundell, Kim H. Parker, Mark S. Yeoman and Danny O’Hare* Microelectrode investigation of neuronal ageing from a single identified neurone. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2010.

Morgan LD, Baker H, Yeoman MS, Patel BA Chromatographic assay to study the activity of multiple enzymes involved in the synthesis and metabolism of dopamine and serotonin. .Analyst. 21; 137(6):1409-15, 2012.

Scutt G, Allen M, Kemenes G, Yeoman M. A switch in the mode of the sodium/calcium exchanger underlies an age-related increase in the slow afterhyperpolarization. Neurobiol Aging. 36(10):2838-49, 2015.

Partners

Professor George Kemenes, University of Sussex