Patients with frontotemporal dementia often lack the capacity for empathy. A study at the Karolinska Institutet has now shown that these patients do not show the same brain activity as healthy individuals when witnessing the pain of others, a finding that will hopefully increase the understanding of this specific dementia disease.
About 25,000 Swedes are affected by dementia every year. Of these, approximately three percent are diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. The disease is difficult to diagnose, but one of its features is that patients lose the ability to empathize, which can lead to problems for them, and not least for their relatives.
In the current study, led by researchers Olof Lindberg from Karolinska Institutet and Alexander Santillo from Lund University, 28 patients diagnosed with frontal lobe dementia were analyzed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The researchers were able to see how the subjects’ brain activity was affected when they were shown images of hands being penetrated by needles, which normally activates the parts of the brain that tend to respond to the experience of suffering or pain in others .
The research shows that people with frontotemporal dementia do not show any activation of the frontal brain networks that are activated in the control group of healthy people of the same age.
What is especially interesting is that we were able to relate this level of brain activity in patients to the way caregivers assess their lack of empathy. There turned out to be a strong correlation, and that is important. It shows that what happens in the brain is related to people’s behavior.”
Olof Lindberg from the Karolinska Institutet
Dementia usually means memory problems, but frontotemporal dementia with a loss of the ability to empathize with other people can resemble other conditions with empathy problems in psychiatry, such as psychopathy. Olof Lindberg believes the new findings on how brain activity is affected will increase understanding of the disease.
“This is an important symptom in patients, and with a lack of empathy it obviously becomes more difficult to act socially. So it can influence the assessment of whether care is needed at home, for example.”
The study was conducted in collaboration between Skåne University Hospital, Norrland University Hospital and Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge.
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Magazine reference:
Lindberg, O., et al. (2024). Altered empathy processing in frontotemporal dementia. JAMA network opened. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.48601.