TARDBP and Alzheimer disease: Importantly, the panel defined a pathognomonic lesion of CTE as the "accumulation of abnormally phosphorylated tau in neurons and astroglia distributed around small blood vessels at the depths of cortical sulci and in an irregular pattern." (Fig. 1) They further observed that the p-tau neurites in CTE were often dot-like, that TDP-43-immunoreactive inclusions in CTE were distinctive, and the pattern of hippocampal neurofibrillary degeneration was unlike AD.