Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown and Cognitive Impairment in Humans

By imaging the living human brain, Montagne et al. show an age-dependent blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown in the hippocampus, a region critical for learning and memory, which worsens with mild cognitive impairment and correlates with injury to BBB-associated cell pericyte. For more information, see Montagne et al. in Neuron 85(2), http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(14)01141-6.