Stereotactic surgery and its application in Alzheimer’s disease rat models

Abstract

Stereotactic surgery is a technique that can be used to locate small targets in the body and administer interventions and/or treatments, such as injections, to the specific target. Stereotactic surgery is frequently used to create neurological disease models in experimental research in addition to clinical practice. The injection is administered with appropriate glass injectors using the rodent brain coordinate atlas after the specific brain region is determined. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, has no curative treatment yet. AD models can be created in rodents through stereotactic surgery and injections of different substances. These AD models represent the disease and are frequently used especially for drug development studies. AD-like models seem to examine different and unidirectional developmental mechanisms according to the creating way. However, AD is a multidirectional disease. AD rodent models created using different methods have specific properties. This review aims to explain the basic aspects of stereotactic surgery and to discuss AD rodent models created with this surgical technique and also with alternate methods.