Ageing is not a purely degenerative phenomenon, but a dynamic process involving biological, experiential and environmental factors. This is the result of two different projects conducted at SISSA as part of Age-it, which thus demonstrate the existence of possible protective and corrective factors.
Age-It is the national partnership on ageing funded by the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), which for three years has been addressing the major challenges of a changing society using a systemic and disciplinary approach to propose solutions on various aspects.
At SISSA, the phenomenon has been studied from a cognitive and neurophysiological point of view.
"Our results show that cognitive ageing is not a unitary or inevitably degenerative process, but the product of the dynamic interaction between neural changes, individual cognitive resources and life experiences," explains Raffaella Rumiati, director of the Neuroscience and Society Laboratory at SISSA. "Through the use of cognitive tasks administered during functional magnetic resonance imaging, the research programme has highlighted how cognitive reserve modulates this interaction, acting as a protective factor across different cognitive domains."
The dynamic interaction between different factors was also observed in the project coordinated by Laura Ballerini, professor of neurophysiology, in collaboration with Davide Zoccolan and Giuseppe Legname. ‘We studied ageing and synaptic integrity in an animal model, the zebrafish, which allows us to combine behavioural analysis with the reconstruction of synapses in confocal microscopy,’ comments Ballerini. "Using ad hoc analysis tools, we described the correlation between synaptic plasticity and social behaviour in zebrafish at three different ages (young, adult and elderly) in response to stress. Our results indicate that the integration between social behaviour, stress, anxiety and synaptic plasticity is a dynamic and age-dependent process, with substantial changes in adaptability and/or response to environmental alterations. Confirmation of this dynamic interaction in our biological model will allow us to evaluate corrective actions together with the study of the molecular and genetic profile related to these changes."
Age-it (Ageing Well in an Ageing Society) is coordinated by the University of Florence and involves 27 institutions, including SISSA. Today in Rome, it presented some of its results during the conference “Ageing well in a changing society” organised in collaboration with INPS. First among these is the importance of investing in research.