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F4‐02‐02: Tau Pet Imaging in Aging: Contributions to Cognitive Decline and Neural Dysfunction

Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Tau PET imaging allows to study regional patterns and changes of tau pathology in the living human brain and how these are related to Aβ burden, cognitive decline and neural activation. We will summarize the current knowledge about contributions of tau pathology measured with PET on cognitive dysfunction in yet cognitively unimpaired elderly from different cohorts. This will include recent findings from the Berkeley Aging Cohort Study (BACS) in which elderly subjects underwent [11C]PiB-PET, [18F]FTP-PET, functional and structural 3T MRI. Cross-sectional tau PET studies mainly parallel post-mortem data with elevated tracer signal in entorhinal cortex and medial temporal lobe, which increases and extends to inferolateral temporal lobes and medial parietal lobes in the presence of Aβ. The limited longitudinal data available so far suggest that tau PET signal also increases in temporal lobes and posterior-midline regions in cognitively normal individuals (e.g. Jack et al., 2018b; Harrison et al., 2018) and that Aβ facilitates the spread of tau to medial parietal regions (Jacobs et al., 2018). Evidence emerges from our study and others that tau PET signal in temporal lobe regions (specifically entorhinal cortex) explains episodic memory deficits and decline in cognitively normal elderly. Limited functional MRI data suggest that increased task activation in medial temporal lobe (e.g. hippocamus, Huijbers et al, 2018) and posterior-midline regions (BACS data) is related to advanced tau pathology in older adults but findings vary by task, contrast and region. Tau PET data propose that tau pathology in aging, even without evidence of Aβ burden, relates to memory decline and neural alterations. It remains unclear whether this represents early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and which factors drive the spread of tau pathology in the progression from aging towards AD.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jalz.2019.06.4719
Authors: Anne Maass, Theresa M. Harrison, David Berron, Jenna N. Adams, Renaud La Joie, Suzanne L. Baker, Emrah Düzel, William J. Jagust
Institutions: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of California, Berkeley, Lund University, University of California, San Francisco, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2980428140
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