[Verse 1] Transentorhinal cortex, that's the first domino, Braak said tau starts quiet where the memory rivers flow, Layer II stellate cells, first candles to go out, Before the hippocampus even knows what tau's about, Ninety-one paper, staging one through six, Tangles climbing floors like a slow arithmetic, By the time you're forgetting where you left your keys, The transentorhinal's already down on its knees [Chorus] Layer two, first to fall, that's the Braak-and-Braak alarm, Tau tiptoes in before it does you harm, Grid cells flicker, hexagons go dim, Follow the map that's fading and you'll find him, E-C, E-C, entorhinal ringing the bell, Learn the stages early, you can read the tell [Verse 2] Kunz in twenty-fifteen dropped a hexagon bomb, APOE-epsilon-four carriers losing their calm, Grid-like signal shrinking in the fMRI scan, Years before the plaques show up in any brain scan, Stangl in twenty-eighteen said aging does it too, Path integration wobbles, the hexagon skews askew, Walk a triangle blind, try to find your start, Struggle with that homing sense, that's the entorhinal art [Verse 3] Now the toolbox: volumetry measures the shrink, Tau-PET lights up the floors before you even think, CSF markers pulled from a careful spinal draw, But path integration testing might beat them to the draw, A cheap behavioral compass, no radioactive glow, Combine it with the imaging, catch it early, watch it grow Into a screening protocol, two-step and clean: Maze task first, then scan the fading layer II scene [Chorus] Layer two, first to fall, that's the Braak-and-Braak alarm, Tau tiptoes in before it does you harm, Grid cells flicker, hexagons go dim, Follow the map that's fading and you'll find him, E-C, E-C, entorhinal ringing the bell, Learn the stages early, you can read the tell [Bridge] But the cortex ain't just Alzheimer's real estate, Temporal lobe seizures make the circuit hyperexcitate, Stellate cells firing off like a jammed alarm bell, Kindling loops of feedback, a electrical hard sell, Schizophrenia twists the layers, cytoarchitecture bent, Cell packing disarranged where the boundary's meant, One structure, three disorders, each a different scar, Same hexagon compass, broken in a different bar [Verse 4] So picture the protocol laid out on a chart: Screen the walking test before the pathology starts, Then follow with a scan, volumetric or tau, Layer II atrophy tells you what the tissue knows now, Catch the transentorhinal drift before the storm hits home, Path integration data plus a shrinking hippocampal dome, That's translational science, bedside to the bench, Reading Braak and Igarashi, closing up the trench [Outro] Layer two, layer two, remember where it's from, Transentorhinal whispers before the memory's gone, Grid cells, tau-PET, and the walking maze test, Entorhinal cortex — now you know the rest
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