Increased Signal Delays and Unaltered Synaptic Input Pattern Recognition in Layer III Neocortical Pyramidal Neurons of the rTg4510 Mouse Model of Tauopathy: A Computer Simulation Study With Passive Membrane.

Abnormal tau proteins are involved in pathology of many neurodegenerative disorders. Transgenic rTg4510 mice express high levels of human tau protein with P301L mutation linked to chromosome 17 that has been associated with frontotemporal dementia with parkinsonism. By 9 months of age, these mice recapitulate key features of human tauopathies, including presence of hyperphosphorylated tau and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) in brain tissue, atrophy and loss of neurons and synapses, and hyperexcitability of neurons, as well as cognitive deficiencies.

A Novel Form of Compensation in the Tg2576 Amyloid Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease.

One century after its first description, pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is still poorly understood. Amyloid-related dendritic atrophy and membrane alterations of susceptible brain neurons in AD, and in animal models of AD are widely recognized. However, little effort has been made to study the potential effects of combined morphological and membrane alterations on signal transfer and synaptic integration in neurons that build up affected neural networks in AD.

Visualization of DAS28, SDAI, and CDAI: the magic carpets of rheumatoid arthritis.

There has been continuous debate regarding the applicability of various composite measures for the assessment of disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In order to further dissect this issue, we numerically and graphically modeled 28-joint disease activity scale (DAS28), simplified disease activity index (SDAI), and clinical disease activity index (CDAI) by three-dimensional (3D) plotting. We wished to graphically visualize the relative contribution of various elements in the three activity indices to each other.