Monthly Archives: August 2011

Maternal separation and poor maternal care have been shown to have important effects on the developing hippocampus and amygdala in animal studies. However, human children in abusive environments do not necessarily show changes in hippocampal volumes. Interestingly, children reared in … Continue reading →

Studies of normal brain aging have reported shrinkage of hippocampal and frontal lobe volume in humans but not in other species. However, comparable data are not available in chimpanzees. In this study, the authors used MRI to measure the volume … Continue reading →

There is evidence that the hippocampus has a role in imagining the future. Preferential right hippocampal engagement is observed for imagined future events (relative to remembered past events), and patients with hippocampal damage are impaired when imagining detailed future events. However, … Continue reading →

Maternal separation, which can lead to hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction and behavioral abnormalities in rhesus monkeys, is frequently used as a model of early adversity. Whether this deleterious effect on monkeys is reversible by later social experience is unknown. … Continue reading →

Many of the cognitive deficits of normal ageing (forgetfulness, distractibility, inflexibility and impaired executive functions) involve prefrontal cortex (PFC) dysfunction.  The prefrontal cortex is involved in working memory, which “holds” information through excitatory networks that can maintain persistent neuronal firing … Continue reading →

Healthy aged rats are more likely to suffer profound memory impairments following a severe bacterial infection than are younger adult rats. Such a peripheral challenge is capable of producing a neuroinflammatory response, and in the aged brain this response is … Continue reading →

Prenatal stress increases the risk of depressive disorders in adult offspring. In this study, Tamura and coworkers show that prenatal stress impairs the morphological and functional maturation of hippocampal granule cells in adult rat offspring via the downregulated expression of … Continue reading →

Sleep-disordered breathing (characterized by recurrent arousals from sleep and intermittent hypoxemia) is common among older adults. Previous studies have linked sleep-disordered breathing to poor cognition.  However, it remains unclear whether sleep-disordered breathing precedes cognitive impairment in older adults. Comparing women … Continue reading →