ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some measurement and methodological issues surrounding the assessment of cognitive abilities in aged rodents. It provides a relatively brief and selective review of effects of cognitive aging on some of the major behavioral domains that can be readily assessed in rodents, as well as some neurobiological substrates that have been proposed to underlie some of the impairments. Dissociations in performance in cognitive aging have already been identified in aging rodents. Despite overwhelming behavioral and electrophysiological data on hippocampal dysfunction in aging, a clear understanding of the anatomical and structural basis for the cognitive declines is lacking. Research has demonstrated that vegetables and fruit that are high in antioxidant activity can have beneficial cognitive effects. Impairments in multiple behavioral domains are observed in aged rodents and a wide variety of neurobiological parameters have been investigated in conjunction with these impairments.
