The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) is the site of tau accumulation in early stages of Alzheimer's disease and has projections downstream to the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. The pathological form of tau has the ability to propagate across synapses, spreading to connected brain regions and correlating with memory deficits and synaptic loss. The DG is the site of ongoing adult neurogenesis, with new granule neurons added showing enhanced plasticity and increased survival compared to older neurons. Thus, we are interested in examining neuron age for vulnerability to tau pathology in the LEC-DG circuit. We use an inducible cre-recombinase transgenic mouse model to label neurons born at different ages (development vs. adulthood) with TdTomato, and viral AAV tau injections into the LEC to mimic early tau pathology. Following a 4-month incubation, animals are tested for memory deficits with Novel Object Recognition (NOR) and Novel Place Recognition (NPR) and tissue is immunohistochemically processed to analyze tau levels and cellular morphology in TdTomato-labelled DG neurons. We assess synaptic changes in DG neurons via measuring dendritic spines, dendritic complexity and mossy fibre boutons. Preliminary findings show a trend for tau animals to perform worse on NOR compared to healthy controls, while no difference found for NPR. Morphological results show adult-born neurons have an increase in immature thin dendritic spines and decrease in mushroom spines (mature, functional spines) in tau animals relative to healthy controls, as well as reduced mossy fibre bouton filopodia length. Our initial results demonstrate the effect of tau on the LEC-DG circuit, with altered synaptic connectivity and memory performance.

Vulnerability to tau pathology in the entorhinal-hippocampal circuit

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PS-3-C -  Disorders of the Nervous System

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Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

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Alyssa Ash

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Vulnerability to tau pathology in the entorhinal-hippocampal circuit

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