Putative dendritic correlates of chronic traumatic encephalopathy: A preliminary quantitative Golgi exploration
- 23 September 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Journal of Comparative Neurology
- Vol. 529 (7), 1308-1326
- https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.25022
Abstract
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with repetitive head impacts. Neuropathologically, it is defined by the presence of perivascular hyperphosphorylated tau aggregates in cortical tissue (McKee et al., 2016). Although many pathological and assumed clinical correlates of CTE have been well‐characterized, its effects on cortical dendritic arbors are still unknown. Here, we quantified dendrites and dendritic spines of supragranular pyramidal neurons in tissue from human frontal and occipital lobes, in 11 cases with (Mage = 79 ± 7 years) and five cases without (Mage = 76 ± 11 years) CTE. Tissue was stained with a modified rapid Golgi technique. Dendritic systems of 20 neurons per region in each brain (N = 640 neurons) were quantified using computer‐assisted morphometry. One key finding was that CTE neurons exhibited increased variability and distributional changes across six of the eight dendritic system measures, presumably due to ongoing degeneration and compensatory reorganization of dendritic systems. However, despite heightened variation among CTE neurons, CTE cases exhibited lower mean values than control cases in seven of the eight dendritic system measures. These dendritic alterations may represent a new pathological marker of CTE, and further examination of dendritic changes could contribute to both mechanistic and functional understandings of the disease.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U01NS086659, U54NS115266)
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