In order to define a possible link between early life experiences and the later development of AD, we investigated the effects of early life stress (ELS) and early handling (EH) from PND 2-9 on survival and life expectancy, on hippocampal Aβ levels, on memory, and on dendritic complexity in a bigenic mouse model of AD with transgenic co-expression of APP.V717I and Tau.P301L (biAT mice) [21]. The gene discussed is APP; the disease is Alzheimer disease.