Localized APP pathology in the hippocampus is sufficient to result in progressive disorganization of the timing of neuronal firing patterns

Deficits in spatial navigation are among the early symptoms in Alzheimers disease patients, consistent with the hippocampal formation as the site for spatial computations and disease onset. Although the correspondence between the early symptoms and brain regions that are affected early in the disease has been recognized, it is not clear whether progressive cognitive decline is solely caused by a spreading pathology or whether a focal pathology can by itself cause aberrant neuronal activity in a larger network. These possibilities cannot be distinguished in standard disease models which broadly express APP across brain regions. We therefore generated a mouse model in which the expression of mutant human APP was limited to hippocampal CA3 cells (CA3-APP mice). We first asked whether the limited pathology in CA3 can result in memory deficits and found impaired performance of CA3-APP mice in a hippocampus-dependent memory task. By then recording in the CA1 region, we asked to what extent neuronal activity patterns emerged in a brain region which received projections from APP-expressing CA3 cells, but did itself not show any primary pathology. While the spatial firing patterns of CA1 cells were preserved, we observed a reduced theta oscillation frequency in the local field potential and in a subpopulation of principal cells in CA1. Furthermore, CA1 interneurons showed decreased theta oscillation frequencies, and this effect was even more pronounced in CA3 interneurons, which also do not directly express APP. Pathology that is highly localized and limited to presynaptic cells is thus sufficient to cause aberrant firing patterns in postsynaptic neuronal networks, which indicates that disease progression is not only from a spreading molecular pathology but also mediated by progressive physiological dysfunction.