Activity dependent degeneration explains hub vulnerability in Alzheimer's disease.

ABSTRACT: Brain connectivity studies have revealed that highly connected 'hub' regions are particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer pathology: they show marked amyloid-β deposition at an early stage. Recently, excessive local neuronal activity has been shown to increase amyloid deposition. In this study we use a computational model to test the hypothesis that hub regions possess the highest level of activity and that hub vulnerability in Alzheimer's disease is due to this feature. Cortical brain regions were modeled as neural masses, each describing the average activity (spike density and spectral power) of a large number of interconnected excitatory and inhibitory neurons. The large-scale network consisted of 78 neural masses, connected according to a human DTI-based cortical topology. Spike density an

SUBMITTER: de Haan W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3420961 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature