Healthy Aging Research Seminar Series

Vascular Dementia and Cerebral White Matter Injury: Emerging Insights from a Neurodevelopmental Perspective

with Dr. Stephen Back, Professor of Pediatrics, Neurology and Anesthesiology-Critical Care Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University-Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

Summary: Age-related cognitive decline has widely been attributed to neuronal degeneration in the setting of progressive gray matter injury in disorders including Alzheimer’s disease.  However, growing evidence supports a central role for white matter injury in cognitive dysfunction associated with both normative and pathological aging. This presentation will explore how studies of neonatal white matter injury have led to unexpected insights into cellular and molecular mechanisms that contribute to cerebral white matter injury in vascular dementia. It will focus on two highly susceptible populations of glia, oligodendrocyte lineage cells and microglia, which are both iron enriched cell types. We will examine data from human autopsy studies that supports an emerging role for a novel form of iron-dependent cell death, ferroptosis, that appears to be of central importance in white matter degeneration.

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