An examination of the effects of GM1 on APP processing in SH-SY5Y and COS7 cells showed an inhibition of α-cleavage (Zha et al., 2004) . On the other hand, Aβ 1-40 oligomers were found to stimulate the amyloidogenic processing of APP by reducing www.frontiersin.org membrane fluidity and complexing with GM1 ganglioside (Peters et al., 2009 ). Although precise mechanisms of GM1 changes with age are still unknown it was demonstrated that GM1 content in neuronal membranes, particularly in DRM microdomains, increases with age and this increase was more pronounced in the brain of apoE4 knock-in mice compared to apoE3 knock-in animals (Yamamoto et al., 2004) .