THE AGING HIPPOCAMPUS, MOLECULES, MAPS, AND MEMORY IN RATS AND NON-HUMAN PRIMATES
C.A. Barnes
ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging,
Life Sciences North Building, Room 384,
University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ 85724
Healthy older humans, monkeys and rats all show poorer hippocampal-dependent spatial memory, than do their younger counterparts. We have conducted studies of how the aging process affects cellular and molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and spatial memory in rats, and these alterations in cell connectivity, and brain plasticity mechanisms are reviewed. We have recently developed methods for recording from many single neurons in freely behaving rats, and have discovered what appears to be a principal neuronal population correlate of memory retrieval failure in old rats. More recently we have examined hippocampal-dependent behaviors in young and old rhesus macaques, and are beginning ensemble recording studies on these animals while they are awake and free to behave. The results from these studies converge on the suggestion that changes in the dynamics of neural coding provide a plausible explanation for why old mammals frequently become spatially disoriented or lost.
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