Joint Course with the Center for Excellence in Neuroscience, LSUHSC, New Orleans, USA

Faculties to be announced shortly

Normal aging is closely associated with the deficits in cognitive functions such as learning and memory. These deficits are coupled, not to a loss of neurons in the forebrain, but to specific changes of synapses in the central neurons. This course will mainly cover the cellular and molecular events underlying these synaptic changes observed in the aged brain that can be directly related to cognitive decline in young and aged animals as well as in human beings. One of the main topics will describe the degree to which synaptic alterations leave a neuron vulnerable to degeneration and the conditions that promote such vulnerability.