Annals of Neurology: The elderly have difficulty finding words, which may be related to tau protein

Proper nouns (PNs) are unique vocabulary items that can identify individuals from conceptual structures stored in explicit memory
.

Although healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) can affect the decline of image memory, cognitively healthy elderly people often fail to retrieve PN despite the intact retrieval of common nouns and events

PNs can have the characteristics of semantics and events, for example, they can be related to specific events (events) or with personal general knowledge (semantics)
.

PNs involve large-scale neural networks involved in perception, memory and naming, including the spindle gyrus, occipital gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and temporal poles

Tau began to deposit in the medial temporal lobe in the form of neurofibrillary tangles in middle age, which is about the same time as people begin to experience memory retrieval difficulties
.

The spread of this pathological tau seems to be enhanced by another core pathology of Alzheimer's disease, namely β-amyloid (Aβ), and is associated with occasional decline in memory ability, even in the case of normal cognition

That is, β-amyloid (Aβ) is strengthened and is related to the occasional decline in memory ability, even in the case of normal cognition

Both PN retrieval and explicit memory involve the medial temporal lobe area.
In addition, the medial temporal lobe tau and PN retrieval failure occur at the same time in middle age, raising the question of whether tau deposition is related to this common complaint of the elderly
.

In this way, Victoria R.
Tennant of the University of California Berkeley and others evaluated the relationship between PN retrieval performance, explicit memory, and PET-measured tau and Aβ deposition in 85 healthy elderly people
.

They found that the difficulty in obtaining proper nouns is common in the elderly, which coincides with the accumulation of protein gathered in middle age
.

They investigated the relationship between the ability of healthy elderly people to retrieve names and signs and the relationship between amyloid beta plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles measured by positron emission tomography
.

More tau in the Fusiform on the left and the parahippocampal gyrus is related to the decrease in the performance of correct name retrieval, and this effect is enhanced by amyloid β

These findings provide an explanation for a common symptom in the elderly and link proper name retrieval to the nervous system involved in facial perception, memory, and naming
.

These findings provide an explanation for a common symptom in the elderly and link proper name retrieval to the nervous system involved in facial perception, memory, and naming
.

Original source:
Tennant VR, Harrison TM, Adams JN, La Joie R, Winer JR, Jagust WJ.

Fusiform gyrus phospho-tau is associated with failure of proper name retrieval in aging.
_Ann Neurol_.

Fusiform gyrus phospho-tau is associated with failure of proper name retrieval in aging.
_Ann Neurol_.

Leave a message here