EurekAlert -- BOSTON –-The most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and a relatively rare hereditary form of dementia, frontotemporal dementia with parkinsonism-17, share a common pathology: Both are the result of an overaccumulation of tau proteins, which form tangled lesions in the brain’s neurons and eventually lead to the collapse of the brain cells responsible for memory. And, although mutations in the gene encoding tau have not been found in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, they have been identified in individual with frontotemporal dementia, and are often used as models for studying Alzheimer’s disease.
