Aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
My expertise is in aging and Alzheimer’s disease-related degeneration and regeneration in the brain. The goal of my research is to elucidate the role of white matter pathology in the development of age-related cognitive deficits. Currently, our studies have shown two significant pathological changes in white matter with aging: malfunctioning of oligodendrocytes and demyelination of axons. These changes will lead to a “functional” disconnection in the brain leading to cognitive disturbances. My second research interest is the role of vascular pathology in Alzheimer’s disease, specifically hypertension and the relation between white matter infarcts and AD pathology. Our studies have shown that small ischemic infarcts both increase Aß deposition and decrease cognition. These studies include the use of therapeutic agents (i.e., amyloid β binding peptides) that may be promising in the alleviation or delay of agerelated neural and cognitive changes.
Further, we have begun investigating the role of obesity, and/or caloric restriction and hunger (by using synthetic ghrelin agonist) in the development of cognitive deficits in aging and AD. We have demonstrated that hunger has similar positive effects on aging and AD as caloric restriction has, i.e., ghrelin agonist treated animals has less age and disease related inflammation in the brain.
