BDNF and Alzheimer disease: Remarkably, BDNF has been shown to protect and/or repair hippocampal neurons and synapses despite Aβ accumulation and neuronal toxicity in a mouse model of AD (Nagahara et al., 2009) and to rescue plasticity deficits induced by synthetic Aβ oligomers in rat hippocampal slices ex vivo (Zeng et al., 2010).