| Citation | Maria Grazia Spillantini studies the molecular neuropathological features of neurodegenerative diseases and how they relate to disease pathogenesis. She was the first to identify alphasynuclein as the major component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neuritis, the defining neuropathological features of Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Her findings have opened up a new field, and these diseases are now often referred to as alphasynucleinopathies. She identified one of the first mutations in the Tau gene as a cause for familial frontotemporal dementia, and has thus established that Tau dysfunction is sufficient to cause degeneration and dementia in diseases now known as tauopathies |