Fig. 5.

Reports of neuron death in the human cerebral cortex during normal aging. Note that in the 1950s through 1980s reports prevailed that claimed substantial neuron death (“neuronal fall-out”) during normal aging, until the report of Haug et al. (1984) (indicated with a red square) convincingly exposed this concept to be a technical artifact. It is now well established that there is no significant global cortical neuron loss with normal aging (see also Fig. 6).