题    目：Biomarkers of Cellular Aging & Why They Are Salient To the Social Sciences

             （衰老的生理机制）

主讲人：Richard Ebstein （新加坡国立大学）

时    间：1月8日（星期二）上午10：00-11：00

地    点：心理学院214

主讲人简介：

Richard Ebstein教授于1968年获得Yale大学博士学位。之后在New York University，Ben-Gurion University，Hebrew University担任教职，2010年开始在新加坡国立大学心理学院任教授。累计发表sci论文600多篇，其中包括Nature，Neuron, PNAS等一流期刊，引用2万6千多次。Ebstein教授主要研究心理特质的基因机制，近年来关注老年人的决策及健康老龄化的生理机制。

摘要：

Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures that cap the end of chromosomes and serve to prevent their fusion and degradation. In humans, telomeres consist of TTAGGG repeats. Each division of a cell erodes telomere length, and when telomeres reach a critical short length, the cell enters senescence and no longer divides albeit the cell is metabolically active and functional. Many exogenous factors, such as the early family environment, lifestyle, and stress, also have considerable impact on cellular aging. In addition to these factors, we suggest that economic preferences characterized as overly impatient or impulsive may also correlate with cellular aging. In the first study discussed today, we sought to clarify the link between delay discounting and leukocyte telomere length (LTL), an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level. We examined a large group of 1,158 nominally healthy Singaporean university undergraduates and probed the relationship between LTL with delay discounting measured by behavioral economic tasks. In the second study today, we examine LTL as a biomarker for successful aging. This study is especially germane in a rapidly greying world, where some individuals maintain successful aging trajectories, viz. high physical, cognitive, emotional, and social functioning in older age. The goals of this study are to examine (1) if successful aging is associated with LTL  2) if successful aging accounts for age-related LRL and (2) whether low socio-economic status moderates the effect of age on LTL.