![]() In this remote lakeside town ringed by birch forests, what happens to a person who can't walk anymore, wears diapers, and feels his or her mind fading because age-related hydrocephalus squashes their brain tissue? He or she can undergo a day surgery at Kuopio University Hospital that will restore their quality of life. ![]() ![]() Kuopio, in southeastern Finland, site of a unique brain biopsy cohort. Together, Ville Leinonen, Tarja Malm, and Mikko Hiltunen-faculty in different disciplines at the University of Eastern Finland-have pioneered a system that might well inspire other medical research centers around the world. ![]() It is a story about how tight-sometimes minute-by-minute-integration between medicine and science can benefit patients suffering from an obscure illness while simultaneously propelling neurodegeneration research to the next level. This serialized report from Kuopio, a small Finnish city close to the Russian border, is well worth considering. Heads up, Alzheimerologists around the world. Fed into FinnGen, these samples enable functional studies on ADRD variants in APP, C9ORF72, GRN, TMEM106B, and other genes.They bank dura, CSF, blood, skin, and fat from the same patients, and follow them longitudinally.Every week, neurosurgeons supply electrophysiologists with cortex.Nearly half have Alzheimer's pathology, offering a natural model of LOAD.A routine shunt surgery improves clinical care for people with hydrocephalus.Therefore, we have added a middle-age group to our studies in order to better understand normal development across the lifespan as well as effects of pathology on cognitive functioning in the aging brain. This suggests that a young age group may not be the best control group for understanding aging effects on the brain since development is ongoing within this age range. In addition, recent results show that white matter tracts within the frontal and temporal lobes, regions critical for higher cognitive functions, continue to mature well into the 4th decade of life. ![]() The health of the elderly group has not been well-documented in most previous studies and elderly participants are rarely excluded, or placed into a separate group, due to health-related problems. Individuals with a history of hypertension, for example, are likely to have multiple white matter insults which compromise cognitive functioning, independent of aging processes. From our perspective, level of cognitive functioning achieved by a group of elderly is largely determined by the health of individuals within this group. Here we review a series of our own studies which lead us to an alternative interpretation, and highlights a couple of potential confounds in the aging literature that may act to increase the variability of results within age groups and across laboratories. Many neuroimaging studies of age-related memory decline interpret resultant differences in brain activation patterns in the elderly as reflecting a type of compensatory response or regression to a simpler state of brain organization. Development and Decline of Memory Functions in Normal, Pathological and Healthy Successful Aging Development and Decline of Memory Functions in Normal, Pathological and Healthy Successful AgingĪine, C. ![]()
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