FIG. 5.

Loss of stable postsynaptic contacts in AD. (A) Confocal images of DIV14-fixed hippocampal neurons in culture. Primary hippocampal neurons were transfected with TD-Tomato plasmid at DIV7 and left untreated (control, CTRL) or treated for 3–4 days with synthetic oligomeric Aβ (Aβ). (B) Cartoon representation of the synaptic loss observed in amyloid-beta-induced synaptotoxic model of AD. Usually postsynaptic contacts are divided into three morphological groups. Mushroom spines have thin neck and big head, thin spines have thin neck and small head, barely distinguishable from neck and stubby spines that do not have head and more or less look like protrusions on dendritic shafts. Due to big head size, mushroom spines able to make strong synapses that participate in memory formation and storage. Mushroom spines are selectively lost in AD models, and proportion of thin spines is increased. To see this illustration in color, the reader is referred to the web version of this article at www.liebertpub.com/ars