New research led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, shows for the first time that PET scans can track the progressive stages of Alzheimer’s disease in cognitively normal adults.

Below are excerpts from the full story at: http://news.berkeley.edu/

The scientists also obtained important clues about two Alzheimer’s-linked proteins – tau and beta-amyloid.

Dr. William Jagust, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, worked with study co-lead authors Michael Schöll, a visiting scholar, and Samuel Lockhart, a postdoctoral fellow, both at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

Through the PET scans, the researchers confirmed that with advancing age, tau protein accumulated in the medial temporal lobe – home to the hippocampus and the memory center of the brain. The study revealed that higher levels of tau in the medial temporal lobe was associated with greater declines in episodic memory, the type of memory used to code new information.

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