The mammalian neurons can live as long as the body that has generated them. The limit of their existence would not, therefore, written in the genes. In practice, the brain can survive the body. This is demonstrated by an Italian experiment in which rat neurons were transplanted into the brain of a rat, where they set perfectly. The research was coordinated by the neurosurgeon Magrassi Lorenzo, who works at the University of Pavia, at the Fondazione Policlinico San Matteo and the lnstitute of Molecular Genetics of the National Research Council (CNR). The work is published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), and, considering the differences in species, suggests that human life extension would not create problems of survival of neurons. This is because survival of neurons is not genetically determined, but can be determined by the microenvironment of the brain of the host organism.
Reference:Magrassi L, Leto K, Rossi F. Lifespan of neurons is uncoupled from organismal lifespan. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Mar 12;110(11):4374-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1217505110.
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