Approximately 30 percent of older adults who develop significant Alzheimer's pathology in the brain — the amyloid plaques and tau tangles that are the disease's defining hallmarks — never experience dementia. They remain cognitively sharp. They function well. And until recently, scientists did not know why.
A study published in Cell Stem Cell by researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience offers a new cellular explanation. The key is not simply how many immature neurons (neuroblasts — newly generated neurons that have not yet matured) a person has. It is how those neurons behave in the presence of Alzheimer's damage.
