The reorientation of astrocyte processes towards amyloid plaques is dependent on the intermediate filaments of the cytoskeleton because depletion of GFAP and vimentin from astrocytes in a mouse model of AD causes a failure of astrocytes to penetrate within plaques and a decrease in astrocyte-plaque overlap (Kraft et al., 2013; Kamphuis et al., 2015). Here, VIM is linked to Alzheimer disease.