Under pathological conditions, however, tau becomes abnormally phosphorylated, conformationally altered, and aggregates into insoluble neurofibrillary tangles and in neuropil threads characteristic of the tauopathies, including Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal degeneration, Pick's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration and PSP.12 Here, MAPT is linked to frontotemporal dementia.