Fig. 1

Spreading schemes for tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). The color coding and the size of the spheres distinguishes between brain areas affected at early (yellow; large size), middle (shades of red; mid size) and late (purple; small size) stages of tau propagation. The scheme for AD is adapted from Braak and Braak [60]. The scheme for PSP is adapted from Williams et al. [18]. The scheme for CBD was inspired by the neuropathological studies performed by Forman et al. [19], Kouri et al. [20], and Ling et al. [21]. The label at the right side of each panel indicates the predominant tau isoform affected and the type of tau fibrils formed in AD, PSP, or CBD. For a more detailed description of the neuropathological findings, please refer to Fig. 4. BS brainstem, cereb cerebellum, cx cortex, FL frontal lobe, GM gray matter, MTL medial temporal lobe, PMC primary motor cortex, post. FL posterior frontal lobe, WM white matter