From synapses to circuits and back: Bridging levels of understanding in animal models of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by behavioural changes that include memory loss and cognitive decline and is associated with the appearance of amyloid-beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles throughout the brain. Although aspects of the disease percolate across multiple levels of neuronal organization, from the cellular to the behavioural, it is increasingly clear that circuits are a critical junction between the cellular pathology and the behavioural phenotypes that bookend these levels of analyses. In this review, we discuss critical aspects of neural circuit research, beginning with synapses and progressing to network activity and how they influence our understanding of disease processed in AD.

Automated summary

In this review, the importance of neural circuit research in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is discussed, with emphasis on synapses and network activity and how they contribute to our understanding of the disease process.