Research Symposium

BIO

Hi! My name is Kaitlyn and I am freshman here at Florida State. I'm from New Jersey and I am currently majoring in Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences: Clinical Professions. I hope to use this degree to attend medical school. I participate in research at the psychology department focusing on Alzheimers disease.

Amyloid Pathology Profile Across a Parietal-Hippocampal Brain Network Associated With Spatial Reorientation Learning and Memory Performance in the 3xTg-AD Mouse

Abstract

One of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is impaired spatial navigation. This ability has also been found to be impaired in AD mice (Stimmell et al, 2019). We previously demonstrated that the 3xTg-AD mice, specifically 6-month females, show impairments on spatial reorientation tasks. This mouse model demonstrates tau and amyloid beta aggregation, but it is unclear which pathology causes spatial reorientation impairments. We previously analyzed tau and amyloid beta accumulation patterns relationship with reorientation deficits (Stimmell et al, 2021). At 6-months, female 3xTg-AD mice showed tau accumulation in spatial navigation networks that predicted spatial reorientation impairments as identified by independent components analysis. However, amyloid beta accumulation did not predict performance and did not differ across age groups. This amyloid accumulation assessed non-specific amyloid beta 1-16 (6e10) and conformation specific amyloid beta 1-42 (moc78). Here we are assessing one additional amyloid beta stained, anti-moc22, which binds to a different conformation of amyloid beta 1-42 than moc78, predicts behavior performance better than moc78.

Keywords: Alzheimers, spatial navigation, tau and amyloid beta aggregation