{"id":1031,"date":"2012-04-17T15:06:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T19:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/?page_id=1031"},"modified":"2012-06-19T11:37:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T15:37:49","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong> <\/strong><strong>The Effects of Normal Aging on Primate Cerebral Hemispheres<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<h4><strong>Background<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Rhesus monkeys live to a maximum of about 35 years (Tigges et al.,  1988), and since humans live to be about 100 years of age, then one  monkey year is equivalent to about 3 human years. An advantage of  studying the effects of age on the brains of rhesus monkeys is that  these primates have complex behavior patterns that approach those of  humans and their cognitive status can be accurately assessed before  their brains are preserved for structural evaluations. The different  kinds of structural alterations that have occurred with age can then be  examined to determine whether the frequency of a particular type of the  structural alteration correlates with the cognitive decline. The other  advantage of using the rhesus monkey to study normal aging is that these  primates do not develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease, so that the effects of  aging are not confounded by changes related to Alzheimer\u2019s disease  pathology. Senile plaques do occur in the cerebral cortices of rhesus  monkeys, but the plaques are few in number and their frequency does not  correlate with cognitive decline (Sloane et al., 1997).<\/p>\n<p>The normal appearance of these cells in young animals is illustrated in the book, \u201cThe Fine Structure of the Nervous System: Neurons and Their Supporting Cells\u201d 1991, by Alan Peters, Sanford L. Palay and Henry deF. Webster. 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<p>The tissue used in this presentation has been fixed by perfusion of  aldehyde containing solutions through the heart. Tissue blocks were then  osmicated and embedded in Araldite for thin sectioning. The thin  sections were stained with lead citrate and uranyl acetate, before being  photographed in an electron microscope. The sheet film negatives were  then scanned at high resolution and stored in a computer. Some of the  scanned images have been colored using Photoshop to show the  distribution of the various components of the neuropil, and as far as  possible a standardized color scheme has been used throughout.<\/p>\n<p>This research was supported by\u00a0 the Institute on Aging of the National Institute of Health through Program Project grant\u00a0 number P 01-AG 000001. The authors would like to thank Charmian Proskauer and Dr. R. Jarrett Rushmore for their suggestions regarding the final editing of this site.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Effects of Normal Aging on Primate Cerebral Hemispheres Background Rhesus monkeys live to a maximum of about 35 years (Tigges et al., 1988), and since humans live to be about 100 years of age, then one monkey year is equivalent to about 3 human years. An advantage of studying the effects of age on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5666,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5666"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1031\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agingbrain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}