Successful cognitive aging. Yes, please! But how?

Many older adults retain relatively normal cognitive function despite experiencing other age-related health challenges. Are these fortunate individuals simply aging more slowly — remaining “younger than their years” — or is something else at play? Emerging evidence suggests another explanation: genetics and biology may interact with life experiences to build cognitive reserve and confer resilience against age-related decline, and in some cases allow individuals to function well despite having neuropathology that would typically indicate clinical disease. The encouraging implication is that, alongside the search for disease-targeted treatments, it might also be possible to develop early interventions that build reserve and resilience against cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias.

A longitudinal model for research on mechanisms of reserve

In 2019 the NIA launched an initiative intended to advance research in this area, Successful Trajectories of Aging: Reserve and Resilience in Rats (STARRRS). The project originated as an intra-/extramural partnership to establish the first open-science resource of lifespan longitudinal data for the mechanistic study of reserve and resilience. STARRRS leverages a rat model that exhibits reliable, individual differences in cognitive aging outcomes, which has allowed the collection of extensive longitudinal neuroimaging, phenotypic, and biospecimen data to advance research on the mechanisms underlying successful neurocognitive aging. Rats share key biological similarities with humans that make them valuable models to study human diseases and behaviors. The STARRRS project data and biospecimens provide a foundation for new research on neurocognitive reserve, which can then be applied to human health. The STARRRS project is ongoing but the completed lifespan datasets and biospecimens are now available for distribution and analysis, as an open-source research resource.

The available datasets and biospecimens include over 900 individual animal 9.4T magnetic resonance imaging brain scans (structural, DTI, and resting state), test results for multiple cognitive domains, high resolution video and quantitative measures of physical function, as well as lifespan records of clinical and health histories. In addition, longitudinal biospecimens (e.g., plasma, vaginal lavage cytology), as well as flash-frozen regional brain samples and many peripheral tissues collected at ~2-year terminal necropsy are now available. An overview of the specific phenotypic assessment tests and biospecimens in STARRRS is available here.

Sounds great! How do I get started?

All resources generated and curated in STARRRS (including biospecimens, digital data, and BIDS-compliant neuroimaging files) are available at the AgingResearchBiobank and accessible to investigators in the broad scientific community with qualified research proposals. For additional information on how to access the collection, please visit the AgingResearchBiobank.

NIA looks forward to helping you connect with this new resource and other Biobank collections as we continue our work to expand and enhance data and specimen resources for the aging research community.

Data Sharing Scientific Resources