The Science Behind Frontotemporal Dementia

When Times staff photographer Rob Gauthier and I first visited the Bryant family last April to begin reporting a story, (“Little-known brain disease rips apart lives of victim, loved ones,”), about a rare type of dementia, known as frontotemporal dementia, we realized that we needed to explore the science behind the malady. FTD, as the disease is known, is similar to Alzheimer's but affects the front portions of the brain and leads to behavioral problems such as the Bryants experienced with Stu.
I knew about Phineas Gage, the railroad foreman who in 1848 lost the front portion of his brain in a terrible construction accident and who survived as a radically changed man. I had read the work of Hanna and Antonio Damasio, neuroscientists who almost 20 years ago pioneered our understanding of the biology of emotions, and I was eager to see how frontotemporal dementia was being studied to further this research.
In the course of our reporting, Rob and I took a number of trips to UCLA and the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs hospital to interview Mario Mendez, the physician and neuroscientists treating Stu. In our conversations, Mendez helped us understand what Oliver Sacks meant when he wrote, “Without the great development of the frontal lobes in the human brain, civilization could never have arisen.”
By studying the effects of frontotemporal dementia – and its slow diminishment of personality – Mendez is able to see more clearly the so-called social brain, a portion of our frontal and temporal lobes that plays a role in allowing us to successfully interact with each other and build relationships. Take away this portion of the cortex and we are no longer able to moderate our emotions.
Moderation – the inhibition of emotional impulses – can take the form of empathy and embarrassment and is critical in helping us negotiate complex social environments. Without either, as Rob and I learned during the time we spent with Stu, humans grow untethered to the world, unable to read feelings or behave in an appropriate manner.

By steering the discussion about morality, normally the providence of ethicists and philosophers, away from the symposium and putting it inside the laboratory where thoughts are considered to be not so much conscious choices, but instead reflexes based on a neurological network, Mendez and other neuroscientists are furthering the inquiry into the nature of right and wrong. In this light, religion, family, even Freud's notions of superego, ego and id matter less than biology.

Mendez argues that specific behaviors – not harming another person, respecting hierarchy and authority, accepting communal goals, recognizing equity and fairness – evolved among humans. Good manners, therefore, have as much to do with what we are born with as they do with how we were raised and what our parents taught us.
“Much of the social behavior that we take for granted and that we often consider to be learned or cultural or developmental is actually behavior that is deeply ingrained in the nervous system and in the frontal lobes,” Mendez says.
Consider that the next time you’re in a crowded restaurant and watching the kaleidoscope of interactions. Never mind the ability to speak and communicate. Never mind the opposable thumbs. The frontal lobes make humans human.
 
By Thomas Curwen
February 15, 2012

Diabetes...Dementia... Alzheimer's... Pneumonia

Which one would you rather deal with for most of your life? Which one would you rather die from? Which one would you rather your family have to see you die from? Honestly, I pick the one that takes me the soonest, the one that's the least painful for my family. You know why? Because the way you die is the way they remember you... Okay okay, maybe that's not true for every disease or every person. But I see families every day that lose touch with their loved one because mentally that loved one has left the body a long time ago. I see the amazing memory of a person fade away because of disease and a rotting brain, it's disgusting. It's not fair to that person, not fair to the family, it's not fair for our healthcare system. It's not fair to anyone and it's horrible to see in this world. I see people in their 20s and 30s caring for parents with Alzheimer's, I see grandkids that never knew their grandma could talk, that never knew she could walk... And of course they'll never know the amazing person that used to be there. Their grandparents life and memory will be jumbled with this ridiculous disease. And their parents are too busy trying to care for their grandparents!

I see amazing people that are trying to fight against this disease, against the many forms of dementia. But it's not enough, its just not enough.

What are you going to do? Are you going to read this and go to the next page, play the next game? Good luck, it doesn't discriminate. Half the population over 85. No joke.

www.alz.org