The road to restoring neural circuits for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease

Canter, Rebecca G.
Penney, Jay
Tsai, Li-Huei

¹The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
²The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.

Received 1 May 2016; accepted 3 August 2016; Published online 9 November 2016

Nature 539(7628):p 187-196, November 10, 2016. | DOI: 10.1038/nature20412

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive loss of memory and cognition, for which there is no cure. Although genetic studies initially suggested a primary role for amyloid-in Alzheimer's disease, treatment strategies targeted at reducing amyloid-have failed to reverse cognitive symptoms. These clinical findings suggest that cognitive decline is the result of a complex pathophysiology and that targeting amyloid-alone may not be sufficient to treat Alzheimer's disease. Instead, a broad outlook on neural-circuit-damaging processes may yield insights into new therapeutic strategies for curing memory loss in the disease.