Cited by 517Alzheimer's disease research and treatmentsDementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchMemory and Neural Mechanisms

Environmental Enrichment Mitigates Cognitive Deficits in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Open access
Jankowsky, Joanna L., Melnikova, Tatiana, Fadale, Daniel J., Xu, Guilian M., Slunt, Hilda H., Gonzales, Victoria, Younkin, Linda H., Younkin, Steven G. +2 more·2005·The Journal of Neuroscience

Abstract

Epidemiological studies suggest that individuals with greater education or more cognitively demanding occupations have diminished risk of developing dementia. We wanted to test whether this effect could be recapitulated in rodents using environmental enrichment, a paradigm well documented to attenuate behavioral deficits induced by various pathological insults. Here, we demonstrate that learning and memory deficits observed in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease can be ameliorated by enrichment. Female transgenic mice overexpressing amyloid precursor protein and/or presenilin-1 and nontransgenic controls were placed into enriched or standard cages at 2 months of age and tested for cognitive behavior after 6 months of differential housing. Enrichment significantly improved performance of all genotypes in the radial water maze and in the classic and repeated-reversal versions of the Morris water maze. However, enrichment did not benefit all genotypes equally. Mice overproducing amyloid-β (Aβ), particularly those with amyloid deposits, showed weaker memory for the platform location in the classic Morris water maze and learned new platform positions in the repeated-reversals task less quickly than their nontransgenic cagemates. Nonetheless, enrichment normalized the performance of Aβ-overproducing mice to the level of standard-housed nontransgenic mice. Moreover, this functional preservation occurred despite increased neuritic plaque burden in the hippocampus of double-transgenic animals and elevated steady-state Aβ levels, because both endogenous and transgene-derived Aβ are increased in enriched animals. These results demonstrate that the generation of Aβ in vivo and its impact on the function of the nervous system can be strongly modulated by environmental factors.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1523/jneurosci.5080-04.2005

Cites

86 of 86 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • There are many examples of environmental and/or microglial gene manipulation in mouse models of amyloidosis in which cognition improved in the absence of a decrease, or even in the presence of an increase, in plaques.

    “there are many examples of environmental and/or microglial gene manipulation in mouse models of amyloidosis in which cognition improved in the absence of a decrease, or even in the presence of an increase, in plaques.61,62”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Terry R, Katzman RD, Bick KL, Sisodia SS, eds (1999) Alzheimer disease, Ed 2. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Jankowsky, J. L., Melnikova, T., Fadale, D. J., Xu, G. M., Slunt, H. H., Gonzales, V., Younkin, L. H., Younkin, S. G., Borchelt, D. R., & Savonenko, A. V.
Affiliations
  • California Institute of Technology (US)
  • Johns Hopkins University (US)
  • Mayo Clinic in Florida (US)
Venue
The Journal of Neuroscience
Published
2005-05-25
Volume
25
Issue
21
Pages
5217-5224
ISSN
  • 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
  • 1529-2401
OpenAlex
W2059212904
Cited by
517
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 26
FWCI
17.45
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • American Health Assistance Foundation
  • John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute on Aging (AG 15453, AG06656, K01AG026144, P01AG015453, K01AG26144, R01AG006656)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Keywords
environmental enrichment, Alzheimer's disease, amyloid-beta, amyloid precursor protein, presenilin 1, cognitive impairment, learning and memory, Morris water maze, neuritic plaques, hippocampus, transgenic mice
MeSH terms
Age Factors, Alzheimer Disease, Analysis of Variance, Animals, Behavior, Animal, Cognition Disorders, Disease Models, Animal, Environment, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Immunohistochemistry, Membrane Proteins, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Mice, Transgenic, Time Factors, Amyloid beta-Peptides, Amyloid beta-Protein Precursor, Maze Learning, Mice, Presenilin-1

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review