Fronto-temporal dementia
Fronto-temporal dementia is a degenerative condition affecting the front of the brain.
Fronto-temporal dementia is a syndrome which includes a range of relative conditions such as, “Pick’s disease”, primary progressive aphasia, and semantic dementia. This form of dementia affects the frontal and anterior temporal lobes – the parts of the brain that control reasoning, personality, movement, speech and emotional responses.
Although it is a rare condition it is the second most common cause of dementia in people under the age of 65 and is more prevalent in young people in comparison with the more common forms of dementia.
Signs and symptoms
The initial changes affect personality and behaviour. The changes are not consistent for all sufferers, and they tend to fall between two extremes. For instance, some sufferers are overactive, restless and uninhibited, but others may be apathetic and inert. Other personality and behavioural changes:
- Loss of ability to empathize – leads them to appear unfeeling and selfish
- Distracted
- Develop routines/compulsive behaviour
Along with changes in personality and behaviour, those affected with Fronto-temporal dementia will exhibit marked difficulty with language and communication. A list of symptoms common to all dementia sufferers: difficulty finding the right words, problems maintaining conversation, or even a lack of speech.
Differences in symptoms
Fronto-temporal dementia differs from the other forms of dementia in the following ways:
- The plaques and lewy bodies present in conditions such as Lewy Bodies dementia and Alzheimer’s do not appear in the brains of people suffering from Fronto-temporal dementia.
- Although they experience difficulty with recollection, memory loss is not as severe or permanent as it is with Alzheimer sufferers.
- Fronto-temporal dementia patients are still aware of time and place, and can recall information from both long term and short term memory.
- Even in the later stages of the disease, patients are still capable of navigating themselves through their surroundings.
- Intelligence tests taken by patience in the later stages of the disease show no real decline in aptitude until they reach a stage of apathy in the course of their illness.
Treatment
There are no cures for this type of dementia. Treatments for the other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, do not work, and in some instances make matters worse.
However, the symptoms can be managed and the difficulty for all greatly reduced.
Carers are usually advised to work around the personality and behavioural changes – to indulge their obsessive, compulsive tendencies and to make them feel at ease in conversation.
The belief is that certain symptoms exacerbate others, for example, a lack of speech in the early stages is often a result of frustration with their difficulty with language. This frustration leads them to give up with speech and this ‘defeat’ leads towards apathy and depression.
Understanding the changes the dementia patients experiences and devising strategies to deal with them are the best course of action.