GJA1 and Mental deterioration: Parallel investigations of Cx43 in postmortem human hippocampal tissue performed by our group further showed that Cx43 dephosphorylation (at ser368) is increased at early stages of cognitive decline and positively correlated with the levels of a proteolytically active form of CN, suggesting that the CN/Cx43 interaction may have relevance to the progression of neurodegeneration and/or dementia.