Jack July

A section from the CA1 pyramidal neurons of the mouse hippocampus.  This cell is from a mouse model for Alzheimer’s Disease, in which a protein called Presenelin is over-abundant, leading to the buildup of detrimental plaques within neurons.  In the early stages of this model, the mice surprisingly showed an increased ability to learn, possibly due to the increased intercellular connections which arose from the overabundance of this presenelin protein.  The areas at which the neurons connect with one another are the little blobs on the branches in the picture.

From today’s Journal of Neuroscience