Abstract
Some patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) have shown the development of painting or musical abilities after the onset of the disease. In this report, we present another emergent ability. A female patient with FTLD showing dense atrophy of the bilateral anterior lobes and a loss of voluntary activity in aspects of daily living, presented with the characteristic behaviours when given a paper and a pair of scissors. When a shape was already drawn on the paper, she showed reasonable skills with the scissors, cutting without any hesitation. When she cut a blank piece of paper, she showed quite unique geometrical preferences. Her severely degenerated brain combined with her geometrical abilities suggests that the human brain is naturally affected by geometrical homogeneity.
Highlights
Dementia deprives us of various abilities, of memory function, and verbal, motor, cognitive, or executive functions [2] For a long time it had been postulated that a demented brain gradually robbed someone of his or her basic functions, leading to a person without abilities
There are several subtypes of dementia, all of the aforementioned patients were diagnosed with, or considered to have frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which presents as primary dementia characterized by disproportionate atrophy of the anterior frontal and temporal lobes [8]
Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is the term applied to patients who present with primary dementia characterized by disproportionate atrophy of the anterior frontal and temporal lobes [8]
Summary
Dementia deprives us of various abilities, of memory function, and verbal, motor, cognitive, or executive functions [2] For a long time it had been postulated that a demented brain gradually robbed someone of his or her basic functions, leading to a person without abilities. Several studies have shown that even after the onset of dementia some patients show a development or emergence of several different abilities, such as painting [5,7,14,15,18, 21], composing music, photography, or solving a puzzle [16,17]. There are several subtypes of dementia, all of the aforementioned patients were diagnosed with, or considered to have frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which presents as primary dementia characterized by disproportionate atrophy of the anterior frontal and temporal lobes [8]. Some of these reported cases had left-sided asymmetrical atrophy, suggesting that specific latent or novel abilities are restricted to left-sided asymmetrical atrophy. We present a case of bilateral dense atrophy of the frontotemporal lobes coinciding with newly discovered latent or novel abilities. We believe that investigation of these abilities might be a gateway to hidden human functions
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