What is Frontotemporal Dementia?

Frontotemporal dementias can be classified based on the symptoms of the disease, such as behavioral problems and/or language problems (aphasia). There are three clinical forms of frontotemporal dementia:

• Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. This is the most common form of frontotemporal dementia. It involves changes in the patient's personality, behaviour and emotions. Patients may exhibit socially inappropriate behaviour, lack of inhibition, apathy and loss of empathy. Some patients also develop ritualistic behaviours and change their food preferences, especially towards sweet foods. It also affects the executive functions of the brain, that is, those involved in planning, judgement and problem-solving. 
• Non-fluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia. This is a neurological condition that affects the ability to speak and express oneself correctly. People suffering from this condition have difficulty producing words and sentences because the brain has difficulty coordinating the necessary movements to speak. This is not due to a muscular problem, but a disorder in how the brain plans these movements. In general, people with this variant can understand what others say, but find talking to be increasingly difficult and, over time, their sentences become shorter and simpler. They often have trouble forming grammatically correct sentences, and may avoid words they fail to pronounce well. 
• Semantic variant primary progressive aphasia. This is characterised mainly by a loss of semantic knowledge, that is, the meaning of concepts. This leads to patients having problems with understanding words and recognising objects or people.