A03
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia with currently more than 50 million patients worldwide suffering from impaired short-term memory and environmental disorientation. The symptoms are most likely due to degeneration of the hippocampus (HC), a brain region largely responsible for consolidation of spatial memory. However, the AD related neurodegenerative mechanisms in the hippocampus leading to spatial memory impairments remain elusive, since diverse populations of functionally and molecularly defined cell types constitutes HC’s network functionality. Our scientific goal is to define the neurophysiological mechanisms by which AD impairs the interaction of cell populations and how this impairment can predict deficits in spatial memory and behavior.
Principal Investigators
Dr. Stefan Dürschmid
Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Remy
Co-Workers
Xinyun Che
Dennis Dalügge
Dr. Hiroshi Kaneko
Felix Kuhn
Petra Mocellin
Our Research
In our experimental approach we use transgenic mice with AD specific hallmarks, such as the accumulation of amyloid beta plaques. We use fluorescence in-situ hybridization of cell type specific mRNA to identify differences in the prevalence and distribution of different molecular cell types between wild type and transgenic animals. With two-photon in vivo calcium imaging we are further able to image the activity of hundreds of neurons in the hippocampus of the animals while they are performing in a spatial memory task. Machine learning based analysis techniques allow us to find correlations between pathological behavior and impaired neuronal activity. We also investigate to which extend the transgenic animals allocate cognitive resources to compensate for the impairment of specific hippocampal circuitries.
Locomotion is known to alter HC activity in rodents. In a translational approach we study whether locomotion has the potential to regulate HC theta activity and leads to improvement of memory capacity in human subjects. The notion that motion and cognition are densely linked dates back to the astonishingly modern Peripatetic school of philosophy in ancient Greece. A central claim is that exercise can improve memory, attention, and help people think creatively. Unfortunately, only a few behavioral studies in humans showed that walking is associated with better performance in divergent thinking. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms at the functional neural network level are still unclear.
The aims of our research
The aim of our research is to investigate whether and how motion can affect the encoding of information into memory and retrieval of memory content and how neural network activity enables this motion and cognition interaction. Utilizing the exquisite temporal and spectral resolution of non-invasive magnetoencephalographic and invasive electrocorticographic recordings we seek to delineate the neuronal mechanisms.
