Could This Be Why Alzheimer's Patients Wander?

Its estimated that three out of five people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) wander and get lost, usually beginning in the early stages of the disease, leaving them vulnerable to injury. Researchers have suspected that along with memory deficiencies the disease also affects the navigational centers—or GPS—of the brain. Now, investigators from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have recently discovered that the spatial disorientation that leads to wandering in many Alzheimer's disease patients is caused by the accumulation of tau protein in navigational nerve cells within the brain.