Brain cells signaled location less clearly in Alzheimer’s-model mice
Recordings from seven 18-month-old Alzheimer’s-model mice and eight age-matched controls revealed poorer location and speed signals during arena exploration.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In an animal experiment, researchers recorded brain-cell activity in seven 18-month-old mice genetically altered to model Alzheimer’s disease and eight age-matched control mice. They monitored the medial entorhinal cortex, a brain region involved in navigation, during four 20-minute arena sessions over two days. The arena context stayed the same for three sessions and changed for the fourth.
Cells in the altered mice carried less information about location than control cells in all four sessions. Cells that responded to location had less stable firing maps. Computer analyses also identified position and speed less accurately from the altered mice’s cell activity, both within sessions and across sessions.
Why it matters
The work addresses how abnormal brain-cell activity may contribute to cognitive difficulties associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Caveats
Brain recordings and computer analyses measured spatial signals, not cognitive deficits themselves. The results came from a small experiment in genetically altered mice, not people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The paper
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Cell Reports, Jun 6, 2026, Open access
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