Everyone experiences aging in their own way, and factors such as genetics, lifestyle and environment play a role in this process. Some individuals reach the age of 90 or even 100 in good health, without medications or brain disease. But how do these individuals maintain their health as they age?
Luuk de Vries from Joost Verhaagen’s group, and his colleagues Dick Swaab and Inge Huitinga, looked at brains from the Netherlands Brain Bank. The Netherlands Brain Bank stores brain tissue from more than 5,000 deceased brain donors with a wide range of different brain diseases. What makes the Netherlands Brain Bank so unique is that, in addition to the stored tissue with very precise neuropathological diagnoses, they also keep the documented medical history and detailed disease course with the symptoms of each donor.
The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience conducts basic and strategic research in the neurosciences, focusing in particular on the brain and the visual system.
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