Dendritic Spines: Mediators of Cognitive Resilience in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease
Year: 2020
Type: review
Abstract: Cognitive resilience is often defined as the ability to remain cognitively normal in the face of insults to the brain. These insults can include disease pathology, such as plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer's disease, stroke, traumatic brain injury, or other lesions. Factors such as physical or mental activity and genetics may contribute to cognitive resilience, but the neurobiological underpinnings remain ill-defined. Emerging evidence suggests that dendritic spine structural plasticity is one plausible mechanism. In this review, we highlight the basic structure and function of dendritic spines and discuss how spine density and morphology change in aging and Alzheimer's disease. We note evidence that spine plasticity mediates resilience to stress, and we tackle dendritic spines in the context of cognitive resilience to Alzheimer's disease. Finally, we examine how lifestyle and genetic factors may influence dendritic spine plasticity to promote cognitive resilience before discussing evidence for actin regulatory kinases as therapeutic targets for Alzheimer's disease.
Source: The Neuroscientist
Authors: Courtney K. Walker, Jeremy H. Herskowitz
Institution: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Language: English
Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Pathologic tau and dendritic spine loss in Alzheimer's disease, Identifying the molecular systems, networks, and key molecules that underlie cognitive resilience, Systems Genetic Analysis of Cognitive Resilience Using Multi-Parent Crosses, Targeting Rho Kinases for Alzheimer's disease Therapeutics, Identifying therapeutic targets that confer synaptic resilience to Alzheimer's disease, UAB Research Training Program in Neurobiology of Cognition and Cognitive Disorders
OpenAlex ID: W3066396828