Morphological study on dendritic arborization human hippocampal during normal aging

• Grant number: 14/04308-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2014
• End date: December 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Pathological Anatomy and Clinical Pathology
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Valotta da Silva
• Grantee: Kátylla Gusmão Caribé de Santana
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Epidemiological studies indicates that the elderly population should quadruple between 2000 and 2050. In this context , the attention to morphological studies on normal brain aging has been increased. This interest is motivated by the idea that the cognitive decline and loss of neurons are associated. Whereas dendritic branching of neurons is essential for the connectivity of neural circuits, these parameters are of great interest in brain aging studies. The hippocampus is a brain structure and composes the limbic system. And plays important mental functions such as memory and behavior. These functions are highly vulnerable to synaptic changes in the aging, which may lead to a decline in cognitive abilities. Therefore, the study aims to evaluate quantitatively the changes of the dendritic arborization in the human hippocampus during aging .Will be selected 50 brains of the subjects with 50 years old or more sourced from Autopsy Service of Sao Paulo (SVOC- USP) following the inclusion and exclusion criteria of Brain Bank of the Brazilian Aging Brain Study Group (BBBABSG). This brains will be of both genders and of distribuited in five categories characterized by the interval class of ten years. All subjects will be evaluated by a team of nurses and gerontologists, whose information is acquired from an informant. Considering the goal is to quantify the dendritic arborization during normal aging, will be included only non-demented subjects. For the analyzes , the hippocampus will stained by Golgi - Cox with optimized protocol . For each brain, will be reconstructed dendritic arborization of 10 neurons. The complexity of each dendritic arborization is obtained using the method of analysis of Sholl rings. The Spearman correlation test will be used to compare the number of crossings , the number of bifurcations and the length of each dendritic branch will be compared between the groups. The gender will be adressed to stratify the group. In all statistical analysis shall be considered the level of significance equal to or less than 0.05.