Dementia and Dementia Care

Animal Models and Translational Medicine

Dementia is a syndrome with eccentric memory loss and impaired ability to recall events from the past often characterized by Alzheimer's disease. Animal models for dementia or Alzheimer is important to think about the human phenotype and what is being modelled in terms of the animal phenotype. Animal models of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, based on the genetics of the disease and the closely related front temporal dementia, replicate at least some of the pathology.

Researchers have been successful at modelling very specific aspects of  Alzheimer in the mouse for instance plaques, tangles. Multiple approaches have been adopted to create reliable animal models ranging from rodents to non-human primates, where the animals are exposed to a predetermined injury or causing genetic ablation across specific regions of brain suspected to affect learning functions.