It is a little known and greatly mysterious fact that many people whose brains show the classic neuropathological symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease — amyloid plaques and tau tangles — never develop dementia or show any outward signs of
having the disease. These people live long and productive lives with no signs of memory loss or any other symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia; yet these individuals have donated their bodies and brains to science, and it is only upon autopsy of the brain that it is discovered that these people had brains with all the physical signs of full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have been studying this mystery for years in an effort to develop a potential cure for the disease based on whatever is
going on in the brains of these seemingly extremely unusual individuals.
