FLICKR, DEBS
In the first in vivo study of its kind, researchers show that the pattern of neural activity in the brain's circadian hub—the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)—begins to decay as mice hit middle age, though the expression of a clockwork gene in the SCN remains unaffected. The findings, published today (July 12) in The Journal of Neuroscience, provide a sketch of the possible sequence of events that contribute to sleep troubles of the elderly.
“Surprisingly to us, at least to the point that we looked, we did not see any major deficits in gene expression. So the molecular clockwork is working fine, but the neural activity is running down,” said Christopher Colwell, a professor in UCLA's School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study.
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