Subiculum fiber degeneration within the fornix white matter tract in 5xFAD mice

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects all components of the neurovascular unit. The hallmark pathology of AD, amyloid plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles, aggregate within gray matter areas and spread across neural networks. Although AD pathology is scarce within white matter brain regions, white matter abnormalities have been observed in AD patients using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI; Sachdev et al 2013) and white matter tracts are putative therapeutic targets for deep brain stimulation (Lam et al 2020). Particularly, the fornix is a white matter tract which connects the hippocampus to brain regions of the classic Papez circuit and Default Mode Network (DMN). A recent whole brain analysis using transgenic 5xFAD/Thy1‐GFP mouse (Zhang et al 2020) found evidence of fornix degeneration and dystrophic axon terminals within the mammillary body (a major SUB target) occurring as early as 2 months of age. However, due to the broad expression of GFP under the Thy1 promotor, it is difficult to determine the origin of axon fibers and further characterize if other SUB pathways are also affected.