Previous studies have proposed that, in terms of tau phosphorylation, hibernating animals show some similarities to AD patients at the early stages of the disease, as neurons from torpid animals show a marked increase of hyperphosphorylated tau in contrast to euthermic animals (Zhou et al., 2001; Arendt et al., 2003; Arendt, 2004; Avila et al., 2004; Härtig et al., 2005, 2007; Su et al., 2008; Stieler et al., 2011). Here, MAPT is linked to Alzheimer disease.