Tau pathology leads to lonely non-traveling slow waves that mediate human memory impairment

Memory markedly declines with age, exaggerated in those with Alzheimer’s disease, yet the mechanisms are still not resolved. Here, we show that frontal lobe tau pathology in humans leads to impaired en masse unity and cortical traveling propagation of NREM slow waves, consequentially impairing memory retention. We elucidate these findings using PET tau brain imaging, and then replicate and extend them using AD pathology markers derived from lumbar puncture CSF in an independent clinical cohort. Thus, tau-associated memory deficits are not wholly direct, but indirectly mediated through consequential “lonely”, non-traveling slow-wave events.