Hippocampal memory consolidation
Place cells fire as you navigate space, encoding locations into sequences. During rest, the hippocampus rapidly replays these sequences to consolidate memories. In Alzheimer's disease, replay events still occur at the same frequency — but their structure is scrambled. The brain keeps trying to remember. The process itself has gone wrong.
Click to toggle between healthy and Alzheimer's replay. Watch how disordered replay causes place cells to lose their spatial coding over time.
Based on Bhatt et al. (2026), Current Biology — UCL research on disrupted hippocampal replay in Alzheimer's mouse models.