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About this conversation
Human 7T MRI and mouse experiments reveal how aging reorganizes the structure and function of specific sensory-cortex layers.
We thank Dr. Peng Liu for sharing the research, the thinking behind the discovery, and the challenges and decisions that shaped the work with the Biolà community.
PAPERS & REFERENCES
Nature NeuroscienceEVENT MATERIALS
On September 7, 2025, at 8:00 PM Beijing Time, Biolà hosted the 16th issue of the Bioneer First-Author Forum, featuring Dr. Peng Liu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) in Tübingen, Germany. The session was delivered in English. As the first author of the featured study, Dr. Liu presented “Layer-Specific Changes in Sensory Cortex Across the Lifespan in Mice and Humans,” published in Nature Neuroscience in 2025.
Cortical layers differ in their inputs, outputs, and computational roles, yet how these layer-specific architectures change with age—and how such changes affect sensory processing—has remained unclear. Combining in vivo 7T MRI in younger and older adults with calcium imaging and histological analyses in mice, Liu and colleagues characterized age-related changes in the primary somatosensory cortex across species. In older adults, cortical layer IV was enlarged and more heavily myelinated and was associated with prolonged sensory input signals, while age-related cortical thinning was driven primarily by deeper layers and accompanied by increased myelination.
Parallel experiments in mice revealed increased sensory-evoked neuronal activity in older animals together with increased parvalbumin expression, suggesting a potential compensatory balance in inhibitory circuitry. Across both species, the middle and deep cortical layers showed particularly pronounced sensitivity to aging. By integrating structural and functional measurements across humans and mice, the study provides a cross-species view of how sensory cortical microstructure and function are reorganized across the lifespan.
We sincerely thank Dr. Peng Liu for sharing the findings and scientific thinking behind this work with the Biolà community, and for discussing how multimodal and cross-species approaches can reveal layer-specific mechanisms of cortical aging.
Citation: Liu, P., Doehler, J., Henschke, J. U., Northall, A., Knaf-Serian, A., Loaiza-Carvajal, L. C., Budinger, E., Schwarzkopf, D. S., Speck, O., Pakan, J. M. P., & Kuehn, E. (2025). Layer-specific changes in sensory cortex across the lifespan in mice and humans. Nature Neuroscience, 28(9), 1978–1989. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-02013-1