Aging of cerebellar Purkinje cells

Abstract

Cerebellar Purkinje cells (PCs), the sole output neurons in the cerebellar cortex, play an important role in the cerebellar circuit. PCs appear to be rather sensitive to aging, exhibiting significant changes in both morphology and function during senescence. This article reviews such changes during the normal aging process, including a decrease in the quantity of cells, atrophy in the soma, retraction in the dendritic arborizations, degeneration in the subcellular organelles, a decline in synapse density, disorder in the neurotransmitter system, and alterations in electrophysiological properties. Although these deteriorative changes occur during aging, compensatory mechanisms exist to counteract the impairments in the aging PCs. The possible neural mechanisms underlying these changes and potential preventive treatments are discussed.

Exogenous dehydroisoandrosterone sulfate reverses the dendritic changes of the central neurons in aging male rats

“…The concomitant reduction of dendritic spines on the hippocampal neurons would be the underlying cause. It would appear therefore that dendritic change is a common feature affecting most central neurons such as pyramidal neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (Grill and Riddle, 2002), motor cortices (Nakamura et al, 1985) and hippocampus (Luine et al, 2011), cerebellar Purkinje neurons (Zhang et al, 2010) and retinal ganglion cells (Samuel et al, 2011). It is suggested that regression in dendritic arbor and loss of dendritic spines on layer III, layer V primary somatosensory cortical neurons or hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons as observed in this study in aging rats may reflect different degrees of degenerative changes that might be induced by regional changes in trophic support (Chen et al, 1997) or in neuronal activity (Grill and Riddle, 2002).…”

Proprioceptively guided reaching movements in 3D space: effects of age, task complexity and handedness

“…Further, multi-joint movement requires precise control of joint interaction torques (Gribble and Ostry 1999), thought to be centrally mediated by proprioceptive feedback (Sainburg et al 1995, Verschueren et al 1999. Older adults may be unable to sufficiently compensate for interaction torques due to agerelated degeneration of the cerebellum (Zhang et al 2010), an important site for proprioceptive information integration (Jueptner and Willer 1998). Since age-related declines in cognitive function may impair the ability to integrate multiple sources of sensory feedback (Brauer et al 2001;), differences in proprioceptive acuity between young and older adults may persist when performing multijoint matching movements.…”

Organ-specific alteration in caspase expression and STK3 proteolysis during the aging process

“…A previous study has observed that while there is a stable number of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum with aging, there are some sections of the cerebellum, such as the anterior lobe, in which a loss of these cells is observed with aging (Andersen, Gundersen, and Pakkenberg 2003;Zhang, Zhu, and Hua 2010). As our analysis consisted of the entire cerebellum samples, this region-specific effect might be lost.…”