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

对老龄化的文化悲观主义危及代际团结;它影响对人的价值和价值的看法，并指导有关护理、研究和供资优先事项的决定。SAACY将为这些领域的做法和政策制定提供信息。英国老年人慈善机构Age UK认为，衰老与牙齿、骨骼、心血管、呼吸、免疫和内分泌系统有关。也许令人惊讶的是，痴呆症只是六个受影响的系统之一。然而，由于其认知丧失的深刻内涵，痴呆症在大众的想象中几乎已经成为衰老的同义词。这种对认知的强调影响了对老龄化的负面评价;而对认知的医疗保健关注减损了老年人的其他重要问题。SAACY试图理解这种对认知的强调的意义，并找出它的来源。它是由科学研究主导的吗？它是否可以用扭曲的流行科学解释或医疗实践来解释？还是文化驱动的？该项目采用历史方法，同时受益于PI在神经药理学方面取得学术成就并在健康人文领域活跃和成功十多年的独特视角。它将描绘衰老的科学和医学思想之间的动态交流，从1880年到今天，他们流行的科学渠道和衰老的文化形象。这种观点在老龄化的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畸变（这可能导致癌症），中年时期的激素变化（如更年期）和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，像其他器官的细胞一样，脑细胞也会老化。但是，在一个痴呆症是老年人丧失人格的最终状态的社会中，这种解释几乎没有什么意义。媒体对治愈老年痴呆症和延长寿命的大肆宣传被一种欢呼年轻人的文化所热切吸收;它也证明了以治疗为重点的研究的优先性，并放大了对老年的厌恶。记忆丧失的经验后果是毁灭性的，并且有可能治愈的遗传形式的痴呆症。然而，认识到与年龄相关的活动能力丧失和记忆丧失之间的生理相似性将有助于消除痴呆症失败的耻辱感。SAACY认为，老年人记忆丧失的研究轨迹部分解释了社会对痴呆症的恐惧。几乎从脑细胞开始受到关注的那一刻起，认知老化就被认为是大脑的一种器质性疾病;人们的关注焦点变成了病理性的脑细胞解体，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调查了导致文化选择性地将真理价值赋予某些科学概念而不是其他概念的途径和理由。它探讨了文化强调衰老是病理性衰退而不是持续的生理变化的起源和原因。它将坚持认为，发展概念在科学研究议程中占有明确的位置。它确保了像生活经验这样的概念将从文学学术的边缘转移到老龄化的文化记录中。联合王国政府在其《老龄化社会大挑战》中提出了如何"建设一个适合未来的英国"的议程。SAACY提供了一个坚实的基础，以迎接政府的"康健乐颐年"挑战，这个基础重视护理和治疗，并强调康健乐颐年来自于每个年龄的不断变化。

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.