Tau and memory performance in women: Advantages of visuospatial over standard verbal memory tests

The accumulation of pathological tau in the medial temporal lobe is a hallmark of early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that leads to memory decline. The majority of studies in AD use exclusively verbal memory tests to detect this memory loss, which is problematic because women have a lifelong advantage in verbal memory such that these tests may be less responsive to early AD. In our Women: Inflammation and Tau Study (WITS), we used both verbal and nonverbal memory tests, with the hypothesis that the nonverbal test would more accurately reflect tau in women.