EIF2A and Alzheimer disease: However, emerging evidence from animal model studies suggests that sustained eIF2α phosphorylation and translational repression of global protein synthesis, which occur under severe or prolonged stress conditions (Erguler et al., 2013), may lead to synaptic failure accompanied by reductions in vital synaptic proteins, neurodegeneration, and memory deficits associated with AD (Devi and Ohno, 2013a, under review; Ma et al., 2013).