Cortical tau aggregation drives axonal degeneration in white matter fiber tracts in Alzheimer's disease
Julia Pescoller, Anna Dewenter, Anna Steward, Amir Dehsarvi, Fabian Wagner, Mattes Gross, Zeyu Zhu, Michael Ewers, Sebastian Niclas Roemer, Matthias Brendel, Nicolai Franzmeier · 2025
Read Cortical tau aggregation drives axonal degeneration in white matter fiber tracts in Alzheimer's disease by Julia Pescoller, Anna Dewenter, Anna Steward, Amir Dehsarvi, Fabian Wagner, Mattes Gross, Zeyu Zhu, Michael Ewers, Sebastian Niclas Roemer, Matthias Brendel, Nicolai Franzmeier (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11713818.txt.
Description
Julia Pescoller and ten co-authors test whether tau tangles in the brain's cortex drive the wasting of the wiring that connects to them, in this 2025 study. Tau normally props up the long fibers of nerve cells. When it clumps near cell bodies instead, the fibers may lose their support and decay, a route to the shrinkage seen in Alzheimer's disease.
The team used repeat scans from a large Alzheimer's cohort, plus a second cohort for checking. People whose side and back cortex held more tau lost volume faster in the white matter tracts wired to those areas. Faster tau buildup likewise tracked with wider tract loss. The pattern was strongest in people with amyloid in the brain. The authors frame cortical tau as an active driver of wiring decay.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Julia Pescoller, Anna Dewenter, Anna Steward, Amir Dehsarvi, Fabian Wagner, Mattes Gross, Zeyu Zhu, Michael Ewers, Sebastian Niclas Roemer, Matthias Brendel, Nicolai Franzmeier |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 3 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |