Neuroscientists and stem cell researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a research model that allows studying human hippocampal neurons, the brain cells primarily affected by Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The study has been published in Stem Cell Reports.
In Alzheimer’s disease the hippocampus, a brain structure that regulates motivation, emotion, learning, and memory, is severely affected. However, due to unavailability of hippocampal tissue, unless post-mortem, it is not possible for researchers to understand what the primordial events that lead to cellular dysfunction, and subsequent neuronal injury, are. Understanding what cellular pathways are altered very…