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Approaching any task on aging brings a flood of images that are a personal repetition of what has been one of the greatest and most persistent concerns of mankind. Even restricting time to the past decade or so and approaching only the biomedical sciences, one still encounters a flood of information in this relatively young research area. The ories and ideas abound as though each researcher provides one of his own. This might well be expected; aging is an exceedingly complicated series of crossroads involving trails and even superhighways. Each specialist has a peephole (society, body, organ, tissue, cell, or-especially in modern biology-cellular organelles, macromolecules, and even molecules) and the views of the crossroads are obviously different. Hence, the num ber of observations just about equals the number of independent ideas put forward. It is natural to seek from highly specialized knowledge a fundamental understand ing of aging through the modern research trends in biology that focus on events at the cellular, subcellular, macromolecular, and molecular levels. The ultimate clues must lie there-with one serious complication: There are numerous cell types in any body and each cell type is a very complex machine of its own. Additionally, there are potential repercussions in that different cells, tissues, and even molecules have effects on one another. This is indeed a confusing situation, and one for which we must seek reliable answers, provided that we can take a step back and provide a generalized view.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
1. Central Nervous System.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Dendritic Changes.- 3. Loss of Neurons.- 4. Changes in Dendritic Spines.- 5. Changes in Synaptic Populations.- 6. Changes in Cell Body and Nuclear Sizes.- 7. Changes in Nucleoplasm.- 8. Changes in Neuronal Cytoplasm.- 9. Neurofibrillary Tangles.- 10. Lipofuscin.- 11. Neuroglia.- 12. Choroid Plexus.- References.- 2. The Mammalian Peripheral Nervous System in Old Age.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Age-Related Changes in Man.- 3. Age-Related Changes in Animals.- 4. Concluding Remarks.- References.- 3. Neurofibrillary and Synaptic Pathology in the Aged Brain.- 1. Age-Associated Changes in the Human Brain.- 2. Neurofibrillary Pathology.- 3. Synaptic Pathology and Glial Reactions.- References.- 4. Cytomorphological Alterations in the Aging Animal Brain with Emphasis on Golgi Studies.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Aging Brain: A Golgi Perspective.- 3. Electron Microscopy of the Aging Brain.- 4. Discussion.- 5. Summary and Conclusions.- References.- 5. Variation: Principles and Applications in the Study of Cell Structure and Aging.- 1. Origin of Variation.- 2. Analysis of Variation.- 3. Variation and Aging.- 4. Applications.- 5. Concluding Remarks.- References.- 6. Ultrastructure of the Aging Kidney.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Materials and Methods.- 3. Results.- 4. Discussion.- References.- 7. Electron Microscopy of Skeletal Aging.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Bone 252.- 3. Cartilage.- 4. Summary and Conclusions.- References.- 8. The Cardiovascular System.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Effect of Age on Physiological Parameters of the Cardiovascular System.- 3. The Effect of Age on the Structure of the Myocardium.- 4. The Effect of Age on Coronary Vessels.- 5. The Effect of Age on the Reactivity of the Cardiovascular System to Drugs.- 6. Summary.- References.- 9. Fine Structure of Aging Skeletal Muscle.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Structural Changes in Human Muscle.- 3. Freeze-Fracture Studies.- References.- 10. Insect vs. Mammalian Aging.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Comparison of Tissue and Body Organization in Insects and Mammals.- 3. Fine Structural Manifestations of Aging.- 4. Comparison between Insect and Mammalian Aging.- 5. Conclusions.- References.
