Aberrant Synaptic PTEN in Symptomatic Alzheimer's Patients May Link Synaptic Depression to Network Failure

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), Amyloid beta (A beta) impairs synaptic function by inhibiting long-term potentiation (LTP), and by facilitating long-term depression (LTD). There is now evidence from AD models that A beta provokes this shift toward synaptic depression by triggering the access to an...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Díaz González, Marta, Buberman, Assaf, Morales Fuciños, Miguel, Ferrer, Isidro, Knafo Farhi, Dina Shira
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad del País Vasco
Repositorio:Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación
OAI Identifier:oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/51924
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10810/51924
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:hippocampus
plasticity
human
cognition
synaptosomes
PSD-95
long-term depression
amyloid-beta
dentate gyrus
dendritic spines
mouse model
disease
memory
phosphatase
retrieval
pathology
Descripción
Sumario:In Alzheimer's disease (AD), Amyloid beta (A beta) impairs synaptic function by inhibiting long-term potentiation (LTP), and by facilitating long-term depression (LTD). There is now evidence from AD models that A beta provokes this shift toward synaptic depression by triggering the access to and accumulation of PTEN in the postsynaptic terminal of hippocampal neurons. Here we quantified the PTEN in 196,138 individual excitatory dentate gyrus synapses from AD patients at different stages of the disease and from controls with no neuropathological findings. We detected a gradual increase of synaptic PTEN in AD brains as the disease progresses, in conjunction with a significant decrease in synaptic density. The synapses that remain in symptomatic AD patients are more likely to be smaller and exhibit fewer AMPA receptors (AMPARs). Hence, a high A beta load appears to strongly compromise human hippocampal synapses, as reflected by an increase in PTEN, inducing a loss of AMPARs that may eventually provoke synaptic failure and loss.