Dendritic complexity change in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an irreversible, neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by memory impairment and executive dysfunction. However, the change of fine structure of neuronal morphology remains unclear in the AD model mouse. In this study, high-resolution mouse brain sectional images were scanned by Micro-Optical Sectioning Tomography (MOST) technology and reconstructed three-dimensionally to obtain the pyramidal neurons. The method of Sholl analysis was performed to analyze the neurons in the brains of 6- and 12-month-old AD mice. The results showed that dendritic complexity was not affected in the entorhinal cortex between 6-month-old mice and 12-month-old mice. The dendritic complexity had increased in the primary motor cortex and CA1 region of hippocampus of 12- month-old mice compared with 6-month-old mice. On the contrary, dendritic complexity in the prefrontal cortex was decreased significantly between 6-month-old and 12-month-old mice. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide high-resolution brain images of triple transgenic AD mice for statistically analyzing neuronal dendrite complexity by MOST technology to reveal the morphological changes of neurons during AD progression.