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The Origin of Alzheimer’s Disease Lies in the Hippocampus. But Why This Area?

Pinpointing what exactly makes the hippocampus so vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of plaques and tangles.

Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
Microbial Instincts
8 min readJan 14, 2025

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Source: Pixabay.

Originally published at The Infected Neuron on December 12, 2024.

The term “dementia” originates from Latin. It combines the prefix “de,” meaning deprivation or loss, with the root “ment,” referring to the mind, and the suffix “ia,” which denotes a state. Together, the word describes “a state out of mind,” capturing the essence of the cognitive decline it signifies.

About 60–80% of dementia cases are Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Other forms of dementia include vascular dementia, mixed dementia, and Lewy body dementia, among others. As each form of dementia has its unique pathology, I’ll focus on AD — the most common type of dementia — in this article.

Basic research will tell you that AD is distinguished by two unique pathological hallmarks: amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and tau tangles. But which one is more important or comes first remains highly debated.

More advanced research will tell you that:

  • Tau tangles first appear in the entorhinal-hippocampal region, spreading to other brain regions as the disease…

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Microbial Instincts
Microbial Instincts

Published in Microbial Instincts

Decoding the microbial angle to health and microbial world (under Medium Boost program).

Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)

Written by Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)

Named Stanford's world top 1% scientists | Medium's boost nominator | National athlete | Ghostwriter | Get my Substack: https://theinfectedneuron.substack.com/

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