Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience Aging Neuroscience Review Article

of neuronal structures and functions are well documented by the neuroscience community, what is less appreciated is the diverse response of brain neurons to stresses and adverse factors during aging or as a result of neurodegenerative diseases. A pronounced yet underappreciated phenomenon in the response of different neuronal populations to stressful neuro-degenerative conditions is the appearance of selective neuronal vulnerability (SNV). SNV refers to the differential sensitivity of neuronal populations in the CNS to stresses that cause cell injury or death and lead to neurodegeneration. For example, neurons in the entorhinal cortex, hippocampus CA1 region, frontal cortex , and amygdala are the populations of neurons most sensitive to the neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease In Parkinson's disease (PD), dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra are the primary neurons undergoing cell death And, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by the degeneration of, primarily, spinal motor neurons, but also cortical and brain stem neurons (Rowland and Shneider, 2001). The fact that specifi c brain regions exhibit differential vulner-abilities to various neurodegenerative diseases is a refl ection of both the specifi city in the etiology of each disease and of the heterogeneity in neuronal responses to cell-damaging processes