Disruption of the grid cell network in a mouse model of early Alzheimer's disease

Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 16;13(1):886. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28551-x.

Abstract

Early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease (AD) is marked by an aggressive buildup of amyloid beta (Aβ) proteins, yet the neural circuit operations impacted during the initial stages of Aβ pathogenesis remain elusive. Here, we report a coding impairment of the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) grid cell network in the J20 transgenic mouse model of familial AD that over-expresses Aβ throughout the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Grid cells showed reduced spatial periodicity, spatial stability, and synchrony with interneurons and head-direction cells. In contrast, the spatial coding of non-grid cells within the MEC, and place cells within the hippocampus, remained intact. Grid cell deficits emerged at the earliest incidence of Aβ fibril deposition and coincided with impaired spatial memory performance in a path integration task. These results demonstrate that widespread Aβ-mediated damage to the entorhinal-hippocampal circuit results in an early impairment of the entorhinal grid cell network.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Action Potentials / physiology
  • Alzheimer Disease / pathology*
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / metabolism*
  • Animals
  • Disease Models, Animal
  • Entorhinal Cortex / pathology*
  • Female
  • Grid Cells / pathology*
  • Hippocampus / pathology*
  • Interneurons / metabolism
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Mice, Transgenic
  • Neural Pathways
  • Spatial Memory / physiology

Substances

  • Amyloid beta-Peptides