COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF AGING

这个子项目是许多研究子项目中利用 资源由NIH/NCRR资助的中心拨款提供。子项目和 调查员(PI)可能从NIH的另一个来源获得了主要资金， 并因此可以在其他清晰的条目中表示。列出的机构是 该中心不一定是调查人员的机构。 该项目将智人的认知和大脑衰老轨迹与两个密切相关的灵长类物种--泛轮虫和猕猴--的衰老模式进行了比较。该项目的一个关键要素是佐治亚理工学院在安德森·史密斯博士的指导下进行的结构效度研究。在这项研究中，大约200名正常人被测试，以检验广泛使用的猴子任务在评估人类认知功能特定领域的表现方面的有效性。 这部分研究表明，人类确实存在与年龄相关的变化，这些变化对为非人类灵长类动物(NHP)开发的那些任务的表现产生了负面影响。目前正在进行分析，以确定这些任务的性能下降是否与人类认知老化研究中常用任务的下降有关。NHP的研究涉及36只黑猩猩和24只恒河猴。每个NHP都要接受一组行为测试，旨在评估认知功能的特定方面，这些功能可能与大脑区域有关，如背外侧前额叶皮质(DlPFC)或海马体结构。此外，我们最近为黑猩猩增加了一系列任务，用于对人类和黑猩猩的童年和发育进行比较研究。 在过去的项目年中，我们还改进和开发了一套用于健康人、遗忘症轻度认知障碍患者和阿尔茨海默病患者的任务。 这些行为研究，以及补充的活体神经成像研究，将阐明促进人类特有的衰老和疾病模式的认知和衰老过程的差异，从而为人类临床的治疗干预策略提供信息。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. This project compares trajectories of cognitive and brain aging in Homo sapiens with the pattern of aging in two closely related primate species, Pan troglodytes and Macaca mulatta. One key element of the project is the construct validity study being carried out at Georgia Institute of Technology under the direction of Dr. Anderson Smith. Approximately 200 normal human subjects have been tested in this study to examine the validity of widely used monkey tasks in assessing performance on specific domains of human cognitive function. This portion of the study has demonstrated that there are indeed age-related changes in humans that negatively affect performance of those tasks developed for the non human primate (NHP). Analyses are now underway to determine whether declines in performance of these tasks correlate with declines in tasks in common use in the studies of human cognitive aging. The NHP studies involve 36 chimpanzees and 24 rhesus monkeys. Each NHP undergoes a behavioral test battery designed to assess specific aspects of cognitive functioning that can be linked to brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) or the hippocampal formation. In addition, we have recently added a series of tasks for the chimpanzee that have been used in comparative studies of childhood and development in humans and chimpanzees. During the past project year, we have also refined and developed the set of tasks that are to be used with healthy humans, as well as in humans with Mild Cognitive Impairment of the amnestic variety and in patients with Alzheimer's disease. These behavioral studies, as well as complementary in vivo neuroimaging studies, will shed light upon the differences in cognitive and aging processes that foster the human-specific pattern of aging and disease and will therefore inform strategies of therapeutic intervention in the human clinic.