Explainer | How Bruce Willis’ dementia type – FTD, or frontotemporal – differs from others, and how to recognise the early signs of the incurable condition
- FTD affects men and women equally and can cause quite significant personality changes, as well as aphasia – a decline in the ability to communicate
- In 5 per cent of cases and usually in much younger people, FTD is caused by damage to the frontal and temporal lobes, causing progressive brain degradation
At the time of actor Bruce Willis’ diagnosis of aphasia in March 2022, neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta described the different types of this language disorder, which affects a person’s ability to communicate, on a show on CNN.
Do people recover, the host asked Gupta. It depends, he said, on what causes it: stroke, head injury, brain tumour or – somewhat prophetically – dementia.
Willis’ family has just confirmed this last one is the cause of his speech difficulties.
Dementia, though, is simply the umbrella term for loss of cognitive ability and can be the result of Alzheimer’s disease, when cognitive function is hampered by a build-up of amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
It can have roots in vascular causes, when the brain endures accumulated damage as the result of strokes, say.
Dementia can also be caused by the development of lewy bodies, a type of protein build-up in the brain that causes tremors similar to those in Parkinson’s disease sufferers.