"Tau tangles" and "amyloid plaques" might evoke a Medusa-like image of a head full of chaotic, snake-ridden hair. Unfortunately, these plaques and tangles represent something more real. They're the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease – brain-invading protein formations that used to be detectable only after death.
Within the last decade, however, positron emission tomography, or PET scanning, has made amyloid imaging possible while people are alive. Even more recently, within the past f...
More