Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, USA; Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, USA.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2022 Jun;137:104639. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104639. Epub 2022 Mar 26.
With the rapidly growing population of older adults, an improved understanding of brain and cognitive aging is critical, given the impacts on health, independence, and quality of life. To this point, we have a well-developed literature on the cortical contributions to cognition in advanced age. However, while this work has been foundational for our understanding of brain and behavior in older adults, subcortical contributions, particularly those from the cerebellum, have not been integrated into these models and frameworks. Incorporating the cerebellum into models of cognitive aging is an important step for moving the field forward. There has also been recent interest in this structure in Alzheimer's dementia, indicating that such work may be beneficial to our understanding of neurodegenerative disease. Here, I provide an updated overview of the cerebellum in advanced age and propose that it serves as a critical source of scaffolding or reserve for cortical function. Age-related impacts on cerebellar function further impact cortical processing, perhaps resulting in many of the activation patterns commonly seen in aging.
随着老年人口的快速增长，鉴于其对健康、独立性和生活质量的影响，我们迫切需要更好地了解大脑和认知老化。在这方面，我们已经有了关于皮质对高龄认知贡献的成熟文献。然而，尽管这项工作是我们理解老年人大脑和行为的基础，但皮质下的贡献，特别是来自小脑的贡献，并没有被纳入这些模型和框架中。将小脑纳入认知老化模型是推动该领域发展的重要一步。最近人们对阿尔茨海默病痴呆症中的这一结构也产生了兴趣，表明这类研究可能有助于我们理解神经退行性疾病。在这里，我提供了关于高龄时小脑的最新概述，并提出它是皮质功能的关键支架或储备源。小脑功能随年龄增长而受到的影响进一步影响皮质处理，这可能导致在衰老过程中常见的许多激活模式。
