Microglia in the normally aged hippocampus

Abstract

The hippocampus plays important roles in the regulation and combination of short and long term memory and spatial navigation with other brain centers. Aging is accompanied by a functional decline of the hippocampus and degenerative disease. Microglia are major immune cells in the central nervous system and response to degenerative changes in the aged brain. In this respect, functional and morphological changes of the hippocampus have been closely related to microglial changes during normal aging with or without disease. Therefore, in this review, we discuss morphological and functional changes of the hippocampus and microglia in the aging brain.