Search results for "lifespan"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
Heterogeneous Indicators of Cognitive Performance and Performance Variability Across the Lifespan
2020
Reaction time (RT) and RT variability are core components of cognitive performance that can be captured through brief and easy-to-administer tasks of simple RT and choice RT. The current study aims to describe age-related differences in cognitive performance, toward better characterizing normative performance across the lifespan. We examined mean and variability of response times on a simple RT and choice RT tasks in a large and diverse web-based sample (10,060 visitors to TestMyBrain.org). We also examined lifespan-related differences in response time variability using multiple different approaches (raw variability, mean scaled variability, and mean residualized variability). These analyse…
Trace elements levels in centenarian ‘dodgers’
2016
Trace element bioavailability can play a role in several metabolic and physiological pathways known to be altered during the aging process. We aimed to explore the association of trace elements with increased lifespan by analyzing the circulating levels of seven trace elements (Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Se and Zn) in a cohort of healthy centenarians or ‘dodgers’ (≥100 years, free of major age-related diseases) in comparison with sex-matched younger elderly controls. Centenarians showed significant lower Cu (783.7 (76.7, 1608.9) vs 962.5 (676.3, 2064.4) μg/mL, P < 0.001), but higher Fe (1.3 (0.4, 4.7) vs 1.1 (0.5, 8.4) μg/mL, P = 0.003) and Se (85.7 (43.0, 256.7) vs 77.8 (24.3, 143.8) ng/mL, P = 0…
Improvements to Healthspan Through Environmental Enrichment and Lifestyle Interventions: Where Are We Now?
2020
Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental paradigm that is used to explore how a complex, stimulating environment can impact overall health. In laboratory animal experiments, EE housing conditions typically include larger-than-standard cages, abundant bedding, running wheels, mazes, toys, and shelters which are rearranged regularly to further increase stimulation. EE has been shown to improve multiple aspects of health, including but not limited to metabolism, learning and cognition, anxiety and depression, and immunocompetence. Recent advances in lifespan have led some researchers to consider aging as a risk factor for disease. As such, there is a pressing need to understand the pro…
Moderate Red Wine Consumption Increases the Expression of Longevity-Associated Genes in Controlled Human Populations and Extends Lifespan in Drosophi…
2021
The beneficial effects of moderate red wine consumption on cardiovascular health are well known. The composition of red wine includes several compounds, such as the phytoestrogen resveratrol, that exert these beneficial effects, although not all the mechanisms by which they act are known. Our aim was to study the effect of red wine consumption on longevity-related genes in controlled human populations, such as cloistered nuns. We found that the expression of catalase, manganese-superoxide dismutase, Sirt1, and p53 was increased in peripheral blood mononuclear cells after 14 days of moderate red wine consumption. This increase was accompanied by an enhanced metabolic wellness: fatty acids, c…
Interactions between the sexual identity of the nervous system and the social environment mediate lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster
2018
Sex differences in lifespan are ubiquitous, but the underlying causal factors remain poorly understood. Inter- and intrasexual social interactions are well known to influence lifespan in many taxa, but it has proved challenging to separate the role of sex-specific behaviours from wider physiological differences between the sexes. To address this problem, we genetically manipulated the sexual identity of the nervous system—and hence sexual behaviour—in Drosophila melanogaster, and measured lifespan under varying social conditions. Consistent with previous studies, masculinization of the nervous system in females induced male-specific courtship behaviour and aggression, while nervous system f…
The role of adolescent lifestyle habits in biological aging: A prospective twin study
2022
Adolescence is a stage of fast growth and development. Exposures during puberty can have long-term effects on health in later life. This study aims to investigate the role of adolescent lifestyle in biological aging.The study participants originated from the longitudinal FinnTwin12 study (n = 5114). Adolescent lifestyle-related factors, including body mass index (BMI), leisure-time physical activity, smoking, and alcohol use, were based on self-reports and measured at ages 12, 14, and 17 years. For a subsample, blood-based DNA methylation (DNAm) was used to assess biological aging with six epigenetic aging measures in young adulthood (21-25 years, n = 824). A latent class analysis was condu…
Towards a unified analysis of cerebellum maturation and aging across the entire lifespan: A MRI analysis
2021
[EN] Previous literature about the structural characterization of the human cerebellum is related to the context of a specific pathology or focused in a restricted age range. In fact, studies about the cerebellum maturation across the lifespan are scarce and most of them considered the cerebellum as a whole without investigating each lobule. This lack of study can be explained by the lack of both accurate segmentation methods and data availability. Fortunately, during the last years, several cerebellum segmenta- tion methods have been developed and many databases comprising subjects of dif- ferent ages have been made publically available. This fact opens an opportunity window to obtain a mo…
Do Epigenetic Clocks Provide Explanations for Sex Differences in Life Span? A Cross-Sectional Twin Study
2022
Abstract Background The sex gap in life expectancy has been narrowing in Finland over the past 4–5 decades; however, on average, women still live longer than men. Epigenetic clocks are markers for biological aging which predict life span. In this study, we examined the mediating role of lifestyle factors on the association between sex and biological aging in younger and older adults. Methods Our sample consists of younger and older twins (21‒42 years, n = 1 477; 50‒76 years, n = 763) including 151 complete younger opposite-sex twin pairs (21‒30 years). Blood-based DNA methylation was used to compute epigenetic age acceleration by 4 epigenetic clocks as a measure of biological aging. Path mo…
Stroop task performance across the lifespan: High cognitive reserve in older age is associated with enhanced proactive and reactive interference cont…
2020
Abstract Susceptibility to interference increases with age but there is large inter-individual variability in interference control in older adults due to a number of biological and environmental factors. The present study aims at analyzing behavior and ERPs in a Stroop interference task with increasing difficulty in a sample of 246 young, middle-aged and healthy old participants. The old age group was divided into three subgroups based on performance scores. The results show a gradual performance reduction with increasing age and task difficulty. However, old high performers reached a performance level comparable to middle-aged subjects. The contingent negative variation (CNV) reflecting pr…
Tor-Sch9 deficiency activates catabolism of the ketone body-like acetic acid to promote trehalose accumulation and longevity
2014
In mammals, extended periods of fasting leads to the accumulation of blood ketone bodies including acetoacetate. Here we show that similar to the conversion of leucine to acetoacetate in fasting mammals, starvation conditions induced ketone body-like acetic acid generation from leucine in S. cerevisiae. Whereas wild-type and ras2Δ cells accumulated acetic acid, long-lived tor1Δ and sch9Δ mutants rapidly depleted it through a mitochondrial acetate CoA transferase-dependent mechanism, which was essential for lifespan extension. The sch9Δ-dependent utilization of acetic acid also required coenzyme Q biosynthetic genes and promoted the accumulation of intracellular trehalose. These results indi…