Because our cohort contained brains from control (little to no AD pathology), AsymAD (AD pathology without cognitive symptoms), and AD (AD pathology with dementia) cases, we were able to examine the changes in brain cell type abundance for four different classes of cells across controls, AsymAD, and AD using a digital sorting algorithm [19, 29], and correlate these changes with amyloid plaque and tau tangle burden (Fig. 3a and Additional file 13: Figure S6). Here, MAPT is linked to Alzheimer disease.