Adenovirus gene therapy versus tauopathy

Recent Australian headlines about reversing Alzheimer's memory loss, via gene therapy targeting tauopathy, encouraged me to dust off this blog and to try to understand the paper. I have only skimmed it so far, but my impression is: they have mice genetically engineered to experience memory loss, via deletion of the gene for the enzyme p38γ. Then they use "adeno-associated virus" to introduce a working copy of the gene into the relevant brain tissues, and the mice memories are improved again.

I suspect that p38γ is relevant only for a highly specific form of Alzheimer's. But it is impressive that neural function can be restored by using a harmless virus to reinsert the necessary gene. 

added 7 October 2020: The title of this blog post is imprecise... adenovirus and adeno-associated virus are different. Adenovirus is being used e.g. in Russia's controversial coronavirus vaccine "Sputnik V". Adeno-associated virus is a smaller virus particle that tags along with adenovirus and in fact relies on adenovirus for replication.