Similarity between Schizophrenia and Dementia Discovered for the First Time
Researchers have, for the first time, compared schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia—disorders that are both located in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain.
Researchers have, for the first time, compared schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia—disorders that are both located in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), especially the behavioral variant (bvFTD), is difficult to recognize in its early stages because it is often confused with schizophrenia. Thus, the similarities are obvious: in sufferers of both groups, personality as well as behavioral changes occur.
The result, just published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, was that 41% of schizophrenia patients met the classifier’s criteria for bvFTD.
The research team found that the higher the patients’ bvFTD score, which measured the similarity between the two disorders, the more likely they were to have a “bvFTD-like” phenotype and the less likely they were to improve their symptoms over two years.
Similar neuronal structures were affected, in particular the so-called default mode network and the salience network of the brain, responsible for attention control, empathy and social behavior, showed volume decreases in the gray matter area that houses the neurons. In bvFTD, certain neurons (von Economo neurons) perish; in schizophrenia, these neurons are also altered.
Today, or in the near future, this means that experts will be able to predict which subgroup patients belong to.
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