Early impairment of long-term depression in the perirhinal cortex of a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Visual recognition memory is early impaired in Alzheimer’s disease. Long-term depression of synaptic transmission in the perirhinal cortex is critically involved in this form of memory. We found that synaptic transmission was impaired in perirhinal cortex slices obtained from 3-month-old Tg2576 mice, and that 3,000 pulses at 5Hz induced long-term depression in perirhinal cortex slices from age-matched control mice, but not in those from Tg2576 mice. To our knowledge, these data provide the first evidence of synaptic transmission and longterm depression impairment in the perirhinal cortex in an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease, and the earliest synaptic deficit in Tg2576 mice.