Currently there is no effective treatment and intervention for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Aging is the major prominent risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. The last two decades have seen advancement in the understanding of aging as summarised in the seminal papers by López-Otín et al (2013 and 2023) while progress has also been made in technologies including Omics, MRI, PET, EEG and more. Combination of these two streams of progress has made it possible to tackle the neurodegenerative diseases via early detection, so that prevention and early intervention can be made for these devastating diseases in the ever-aging populations of contemporary societies.
This Research Topic aims to comprehensively capture the theories and tools for detecting the early signs of neurodegenerative diseases. Defining the early signs can be difficult, one way is to define them as the early deviations from the normal ageing processes, but other definitions are possible. Thus, this topic will also collect the current ways to define or search for the early signs and the tools that can be used for such an aim. We welcome a broad scope of articles including Review Articles and Original Research manuscripts addressing the following topics:
• Theories, hypotheses, patterns, or mechanisms of brain aging relevant to the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases. Example of the theories include free radical theory and neuroplasticity theory of the brain aging.
• Definition and mechanisms of early signs including the deviation from aging processes towards pathological mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases. Papers on the deviation from normative aging at molecular or cellular levels, network changes, glial cells change and BBB change, metabolisms and so forth are welcome.
• Tools for detecting early signs including MRI, PET, EEG, biomarkers (e.g. telomere length of the leukocytes and DNA methylation), functional test (e.g. hand grip strength), cognitive assessments (e.g. Montreal Cognitive Assessment) and so forth.
Keywords: Aging/Ageing, neurodegeneration, early detection, Alzheimer’s’ and Parkinson’s diseases.
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
