From UW-Milwaukee:
The primary focus of our research is to understand how sex-steroid hormones, aging, and environmental factors affect hippocampal function and hippocampal-dependent memory. This work is motivated by the rapidly expanding elderly population worldwide, which will greatly increase the prevalence of age-related cognitive decline and dementia. Our ultimate goal is to help mitigate the impact of cognitive aging on the individual and society by facilitating the development of treatments to reduce or prevent age-related memory decline in humans. To this end, we utilize rodents as research subjects because rodent species offer an unparalleled opportunity to examine systems-level and cellular-level questions about memory formation in a mammalian system where the effects of aging, hormones, and environmental stimulation are similar to those in humans. Our studies combine a variety of approaches including behavioral, biochemical, pharmacological, genetic, and anatomical methods in order to gain a more detailed picture of the molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of aging, estrogens, progestagens, and environmental enrichment on the hippocampus and hippocampal memory formation.