The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth, 1880 to the present day

对老龄化的文化悲观危及代际团结；它塑造了人们对人类价值和价值的看法，并指导着有关护理、研究和资金优先事项的决策。SAACY将为这些领域的做法和政策制定提供信息。AGE UK是英国一家领先的老年人慈善机构，该机构认为衰老涉及牙齿、骨骼、心血管、呼吸、免疫和内分泌系统。也许令人惊讶的是，痴呆症是受影响的六个系统中的一个。然而，痴呆症有着深刻的认知缺失内涵，在大众的想象中几乎成了衰老的代名词。这种对认知的强调会影响对衰老的负面评价；而医疗保健对认知的关注会削弱老年的其他重要问题。SAACY试图理解这种对认知的重视的意义，并找出它的来源。它是由科学研究主导的吗？它可以用歪曲的大众科学描述或医疗实践来解释吗？或者它是文化驱动的？这个项目采用了历史的方法，同时受益于PI的独特视角，他在神经药理学方面取得了学术成就，并在健康人文领域取得了十多年的活跃和成功。它将绘制从1880年到今天关于衰老的科学和医学思想、它们的流行科学渠道和衰老文化图像之间的动态交流。一个具有百年历史的细胞研究机构解释说，衰老是一个终生的生理过程。这一观点在衰老进化理论中具有持久的重要性。这些可以解释细胞周期的生理异常(可能导致癌症)、中年(如更年期)的荷尔蒙变化以及老年人典型的退行性疾病(如关节炎或心血管疾病)。他们还将大脑老化解释为在生物变化的身体中认知能力的持续变化，并强调，就像其他器官的细胞一样，脑细胞也会衰老。但在一个痴呆症是老年人丧失人格的终极状态的社会里，这种解释没有什么份量。媒体对治愈阿尔茨海默氏症和延长寿命的炒作被欢呼年轻人的文化所热切地吸收；这也证明了以治愈为重点的研究的优先地位，并放大了人们对老年的厌恶。记忆丧失的经验后果是毁灭性的，有几种遗传形式的痴呆症可能会有治愈的方法。然而，认识到与年龄相关的行动能力丧失和记忆力丧失之间的生理相似性将有助于解除痴呆症失败的耻辱。SAACY认为，社会对痴呆症的恐惧在一定程度上是由老年受试者记忆丧失的研究轨迹解释的。几乎从脑细胞受到审视的那一刻起，认知衰老就被认为是一种大脑的器质性疾病；焦点变成了脑细胞紊乱作为病理，而大脑退化作为需要治愈的东西获得了科学、医学和文化的优势。SAACY研究了导致文化选择性地将真理价值赋予一些科学概念而不是其他科学概念的途径和原理。它探索了文化上强调衰老为病理性衰退而不是持续的生理变化的起源和原因。它将坚持发展的概念在科学研究议程中占有明确的位置。它确保了像生活体验这样的概念将从文学学术的边缘转移到构成老龄化的文化成绩单。在老龄化社会大挑战中，英国政府制定了一项议程，内容是如何“建设一个适应未来的英国”。SAACY为迎接政府的健康老龄化挑战提供了坚实的基础，这是重视护理和治疗的基础，并强调健康老龄化来自于拥抱每个年龄段的持续变化。

Cultural pessimism about ageing endangers intergenerational solidarity; it shapes perceptions of the worth and value of human beings and directs decisions about care, research and funding priorities. SAACY will inform practices and policy development in these areas. Age UK, a leading UK charity for older people, holds ageing to involve teeth, bones, the cardiovascular, respiratory, immune and endocrine systems. Dementia, perhaps surprisingly, features as only one of six systems affected. Yet, with its profound connotations of cognitive loss, dementia has become virtually synonymous with ageing in the popular imagination. This emphasis on cognition impacts upon negative valuations of ageing; and healthcare focus on cognition detracts from other important problems of older age.SAACY seeks to understand the significance of this emphasis on cognition, and to find out where it comes from. Is it led by scientific research; can it be explained by skewed popular scientific accounts or by healthcare practice; or is it culturally driven? This project takes a historical approach, while benefitting from the PI's unique perspective of someone who has achieved academic distinction in neuropharmacology and been active and successful in the health humanities for over a decade. It will chart the dynamic exchange between scientific and medical ideas of senescence, their popular scientific conduit and cultural images of ageing from 1880-today.A century-old body of cellular research explains ageing as a lifelong physiological process. This perspective has lasting import in evolutionary theories of ageing. These can explain physiologically aberrations of the cell cycle (which can lead to cancer), hormonal changes in mid-life (like the menopause) and degenerative conditions typical of older age (like arthritis or cardiovascular disease). They also explain brain ageing as a continuous variation in cognitive able-ness in a biologically changing body, and emphasise that, like cells of other organs, brain cells age. But this explanation carries little weight in a society in which dementia epitomises the ultimate condition of loss, of personhood in older age. Media hype about curing Alzheimer's and extending life are eagerly absorbed by a culture hailing youth; it also justifies priority of cure-focused research and amplifies aversion to old age. The experiential consequences of memory loss are devastating, and there are genetic forms of dementia for which a cure might become available. Yet, appreciating the physiological similarities between e.g. age-related loss of mobility and loss of memory would help lift stigma of failure from dementia. SAACY argues that societal fears about dementia are partly explained by the research trajectory that memory loss in older subjects has taken. Almost from the moment brain cells came under scrutiny, cognitive ageing was considered an organic disease of the brain; the focus became brain cell disorganisation as pathological, and brain involution as something needing to be cured gained scientific, medical and cultural ascendancy.SAACY investigates the pathways and rationales that have led culture selectively to assign truth value to some scientific concepts and not others. It explores the origins of and reasons for the cultural emphasis on ageing as pathological decline rather than continuous physiological change. It will insist that notions of development have an explicit place within the scientific research agenda. It ensures that concepts like life-experience will move from the margins of literary scholarship to become constitutive of the cultural transcript of ageing. In its Ageing Society Grand Challenge, the UK Government sets out an agenda for how to 'build a Britain fit for the future'. SAACY provides a firm basis on which to meet the Government's Healthy Ageing Challenge, a basis that values care as well as cure, and stresses that healthy ageing comes from embracing continuous change, at every age.