The mechanisms that enable some people to grow old while retaining relatively normal cognitive function, despite developing Alzheimers disease-related neuropathology and other changes typical of aging, remain elusive. Do these fortunate individuals simply age more slowly and therefore preserve their youthful cognitive phenotype late in life, or does lifespan experience and inherent endowment build reserve that buffers the effects of aging and Alzheimer disease processes? What are the mechanisms that mediate reserve, and can intervention target these mechanisms to promote reserve and healthy trajectories of brain and cognitive aging, bending the trajectory of growing older away for Alzheimers disease and related disorders? The STARRRS project was developed as an innovative partnership between intra- and extramural NIA participants with the goal of establishing an animal resource for the study of reserve and resilience against Alzheimers disease. Taking advantage of a validated rat model that is optimized for documenting individual differences in the neurocognitive outcome of aging, the principal aims in STARRRS are: 1) to establish the infrastructure and a resource of longitudinal behavioral and neuroimaging data, tissues, and other samples to enable basic research on mechanisms of successful cognitive and brain aging, 2) to include sex as a biological variable in establishing a resource for the longitudinal study of cognitive and brain reserve in aging, 3) to encourage broad community participation through a Request for Information and other oversight mechanisms, and 4) to provide a resource to enable IRP and ERP collaborations and initiatives to advance the longitudinal study of cognitive and brain reserve in aging, toward the prevention of Alzheimers disease.
