Associations between deep category fluency phenotyping and early tau aggregation in the medial temporal lobe

Background Semantic processing relies on temporal brain regions, including medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures, that are the first to be affected by tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A widely used task to assess semantic memory is the category fluency. Performance on this task was demonstrated to be impaired since the prodromal stage of AD and associated to the structural integrity of the MTL. However, the associations between category fluency measures and MTL tau burden have been rarely explored at the early stages of the disease. Method Seventy‐five participants underwent [18F]MK6240 tau‐PET, magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive assessment including category fluency (animals, 2 minutes). Amyloid‐b (Ab) status was determined with lumbar punction or [18F]Flutemetamol Aβ‐PET (Ab+ for cerebrospinal fluid Ab level