Model of Destruction

The brain’s hippocampus is critical for consolidating memories and for learning. It's also one of the primary brain regions affected by Alzheimer’s disease. As the disease progresses, the pyramidal neurons (coloured green in this slice of mouse hippocampus) deteriorate and die, fuelled in part by the accumulation of protein lesions (known as >tau tangles and amyloid plaques). The result is memory loss and confusion. Scientists’ understanding of the disease has come from, among other things, studies of the tissues and cells from patient and animal hippocampi. Now, they’re building a virtual one. The computational model will be based on molecular imaging, 3D reconstruction of neuronal circuits, and data from individual cell types and pathways. This multi-scale model will not only aid the study of Alzheimer’s by simulating disease progression but allow virtual testing of potential interventions and thereby inform actual lab-based experiments.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California
• Project led by Dr Michael Bienkowski
• Image originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Five-year NIH grant award announcement