Article previously published in , a platform specialized in online applications to improve cognitive performance.
It is common for cinema to be used as a vehicle to show the public the characteristics of some mental and/or thinking disorders. Who doesn’t remember movies like ‘An amazing mind’ in which schizophrenia and intellectual genius coexist in a brilliant Russell Crowe, or ‘The son of the bride’directed by José Campanella, in which the plot revolves around Alzheimer’s disease, or ’50 first dates’the romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler, in which she suffers anterograde amnesia as a result of a blow to the head.
Today it’s the turn of a recent one, ‘Hunt the terrorist, directed by Paul Schrader (2014) and starring Nicolas Cage. This time the actor plays a CIA agent whose objective is to eliminate a terrorist who was already presumed dead… something that is not much out of the ordinary in terms of scripts, except for one issue: his.
With various touches, the film tries to show what it would be like to suffer from this disease… not being able to speak well, not knowing how to get back to a hotel… We are going to take advantage of the opportunity to better explain what frontotemporal dementia is, specifically its behavioral variant, and how it affects the people who suffer from it. In this sense we find very useful the diagnostic criteria reached by the International Behavioral Variant FTD Criteria Consortium and published in the journal Brain: A Journal of Neurology (2011).
To suspect a frontotemporal – behavioral variant (FTD-VC), the first thing we must observe is a progressive deterioration in personality, social behavior and cognition. This means that there must be worsening in these areas over time.
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To make a diagnosis of POSSIBLE CVD-FTD, at least 3 of the following 6 behavioral/cognitive symptoms must also be present:
1. Disinhibition: for example with inappropriate social behavior, a loss of modesty or decorum and the presence of impulsivity.
2. Apathy or inertia.
3. Loss of empathy or interest in others and in one’s own hobbies.
4. Perseverative or compulsive behaviors, such as rituals or repetitive movements.
5. Hyperorality: eating, drinking, smoking excessively or even exploring objects with the mouth.
6. Alteration in: they perform poorly on executive tests although they may have relative preservation of episodic memory and visuospatial skills.
The next step in the diagnosis would be to affirm with a little more guarantee that it is a PROBABLE CVD-FTD. To grant this diagnosis two other criteria must be met. On the one hand, the deterioration causes a disability at a functional level, which means that the person is not able to carry out their daily activities as before. On the other hand, signs of degeneration must be found in the fronto-temporal areas of the brain, whether atrophy, hypoperfusion or hypometabolism depending on the test used.
As we can see, not all dementia is far from it, and it is always a good idea to be informed to recognize changes when they occur, suspect them, and request the necessary help. Information is power and especially in health.