Abstract
Parkinson ‘s disease dementia (PDD) and Lewy Body dementia (LBD) are characterized by diffuse spread of alpha-synuclein (α-syn) throughout the brain. These patients have a neuropsychological pattern of deficits that include executive dysfunction, including abnormalities in planning, timing, working memory, and behavioral flexibility. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a major role in normal executive function and often develops α-syn aggregates in LBD and PDD. To investigate the consequences of α-syn pathology in the cortex, we injected human α-syn pre-formed fibrils into the PFC of wildtype mice. We report that PFC PFFs: 1) induced α-syn deposition in multiple cortical and subcortical regions with sparse aggregation in midbrain and brainstem nuclei; 2) did not affect interval timing or working memory but did mildly alter behavioral flexibility as measured by reversal learning; 3) increased open field exploration; and 4) did not affect susceptibility to model of cortical-dominant pathology adds to our understanding of the etiology of varied symptoms in PDD and LBD.
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