2024 Seed Grant
Mark T. Harnett, Ph.D.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dementia Society of America Seed Grant
As we transition from young adulthood to middle-age, and ultimately into the later stages of life, our brains undergo a range of poorly understood changes. A decreased capacity for learning and memory is one of the most traumatic and prevalent changes that occurs later in life in many individuals. In some cases, these changes can become pathological, producing what is termed, cognitive decline, a disruption in higher order, brain function, like flexible, thinking, reasoning, decision-making, and planning. Cognitive decline is increasingly common, as humans live longer, and longer, and can be associated in extreme cases with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Despite the prevalence and severity of age-related cognitive decline and related diseases, we currently understand very little about what actually changes in the brain during aging to produce these behavioral and cognitive alterations. If we could identify specifically what changes occur in the brain, we may be able to target these processes with drugs or other therapies to help stop or even reverse, cognitive decline. This project combines new technologies, and approaches to provide novel avenues for addressing this challenge. We focus on synapses, the highly specialized points of connection and communication between brain cells (called neurons), which mediate the computations that drive cognition and behavior. Synapses. Are broadly known to undergo age-related modifications, but which ones change, how those changes happen, and how they influence learning and memory are almost totally unknown. We are going to directly investigate these critically important questions using new tools that my lab has developed and/or optimized, applying them for the first time to the aging brains of both mice and humans. Results from our study will produce new insights into the queue, biological processes, involved in brain aging, with the goal of revealing targets for treating age-related, cognitive, decline, and associated disorders.
