Verónica Vidal 1, Susana García-Cerro 2, Paula Martínez 1, Andrea Corrales 1, Sara Lantigua 1, Rebeca Vidal 1,3,4 , Noemí Rueda 1, Laurence Ozmen 5, Maria-Clemencia Hernández 5, Carmen Martínez-Cué 1* Decreasing the expression of GABA A α5-subunit- containing receptors partially improves cognitive, electrophysiological and morphological hippocampal defects in the Ts65Dn model of Down syndrome 1 Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain. 2 Universitat de Barcelona, Departamento de Fundamentos Clínicos, Unidad de Farmacología, Barcelona, Spain. 3 Instituto de Biomedicina y Biotecnología de Cantabria, IBBTEC (Universidad de Cantabria, CSIC, SODERCAN), Santander, Spain. 4 Centro de Investigacion Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain. 5 Pharma Research and Early Development, Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland. * corresponding author: email:
[email protected] Telephone number: +34 942203935 Keywords GABA A; α5 subunit; Down syndrome; over-inhibition; Ts65Dn mice; cognition Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, Fundación Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2016-76194-R/ AEI/FEDER/UE). 1 ABSTRACT Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome (DS) is the most common cause of intellectual disability of a genetic origin. The Ts65Dn (TS) mouse, which is the most commonly used and best-characterized mouse model of DS, displays many of the cognitive, neuromorphological and biochemical anomalies that are found in the human condition. One of the mechanisms that has been proposed to be responsible for the cognitive deficits in this mouse model is impaired GABA- mediated inhibition.