Cholinergic axon length reduced by 300 meters in the brain of an Alzheimer mouse model.

Modern stereological techniques have been used to show that the total length of the cholinergic fibers in the cerebral cortex of the APPswe/PS1deltaE9 mouse is reduced by almost 300 meters at 18 months of age and has a nonlinear relationship to the amount of transgenetically-induced amyloidosis. These data provide rigorous quantitative morphological evidence that Alzheimer's-like amyloidosis affects the axons of the cholinergic enervation of the cerebral cortex.