CURRENT TRENDS IN RESEARCH ON PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AGING

The major trends in research on the physiological aspects of aging are: a recognition of the need for information on age differences in people who are performing successfully in their communities; an awareness among investigators of the distinction between "age differences" and "age changes" and the need for longitudinal studies to characterize individual differences in "age changes"; an increased willingness to consider age as an important variable in setting standards for normal physiological performances; an increased emphasis on studies designed to characterize the mechanisms which underlie age differences at both physiological and cellular levels; the development of biological theories of aging and cell death which can be experimentally tested.[long dash]Author.