Key Points
Now, a team of University of Michigan researchers reports new clues about what might be happening in the brains of people experiencing even the earliest signs of dementia-related behavior changes...
Using two types of advanced medical imaging to study the brains of 128 people in the early stages of dementia, they show links between one of the brains most crucial communication networks, a protein called tau, and the level of behavioral symptoms a person has...
While the one-time imaging of these 128 research volunteers cant show cause and effect, the strong association between tau, salience network disruption and behavior change is intriguing, the team says.. They call for further study of the potential connection in other populations, and for research to evaluate change over time to explore what might be going on within the pathways of connected brain cells that make up the salience network, and explore how it relates to tau buildup and behavioral changes over the course of years...
Iordan, a neuroscientist who is lead author of the new study, says, What we see is that the presence tau pathology relates to behavioral symptoms not in a direct relationship, but rather through dysfunction of a specific network in the brain the salience network..
The new study showed that unlike tau, the presence of just amyloid in some volunteers brains was not related to issues with the salience network or linked to that persons level of behavioral symptoms...
