Discovery of silence mutations and intronic mutations of tau gene in some individuals with frontotemporal dementia with Parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17), which only disrupt tau exon 10 splicing but do not alter tau's primary sequence, demonstrates that dysregulation of tau exon 10 alternative splicing and consequently of 3R-tau/4R-tau balance is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration and dementia. The gene discussed is MAPT; the disease is semantic dementia.