OT? Frontotemporal dementia, financial decisionmaking and hearing tests

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) damages the part of the brain which is responsible for executive function, judgment, social behavior, and emotional regulation. This is different than Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) which damages the hippocampus which is responsible for memory.

Unfortunately, FTD often strikes at a younger age (40-60) than Alzheimer’s, which is more common in people over 65. The impact of FTD on financial decision-making is often dramatic and appears early in the disease progression, sometimes before other cognitive deficits are noticeable.

It’s hard to diagnose FTD because the symptoms can mimic plain bad judgment, personality changes and psychological disturbances. The person with FTD may not have a problem with memory. Families may be financially ruined but don’t suspect an organic brain disease in a middle-aged person.

New research has discovered a way to diagnose FTD: hearing tests.

It’s becoming clear that hearing loss is often associated with Alzheimer’s dementia but that may be due to the way it interferes with socializing.

The specific tests for FTD are not the same as routine hearing tests. They aren’t hearing loss tests but mental processing tests. They include:

  1. “Speech in babble” where a real sentence is buried in meaningless background speech like a party.
  2. “Acoustically altered” speech where the letters with higher or lower frequencies are filtered out which forces the mind to supply the missing letters.
  3. Super-fast speech. “Time-compressed.”

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214022

There’s plenty of signal from all three of these tests but the clearest difference between controls and people with FTD is the time-compressed (super-fast) speech test. If a person says, “Slow down. Don’t talk any faster than I can hear” it’s an indication of this effect.

FTD accounts for about 10% to 20% of all dementia cases (estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people in the U.S.) so it doesn’t really qualify for Macroeconomic impact. But FTD can have a devastating impact on a family because it starts during prime years.

I think this information should be better-known. The hearing test is non-invasive and should be easy to administer (given the right software and standard hearing test equipment). If a family member starts acting strange and making bad financial decisions it’s worth testing…though I don’t think this is readily available since the research is brand-new.

Wendy

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There can be other reasons for this.

For instance we have a young intern in work who is a German immigrant. He speaks fast with his mouth almost closed. He is nervous. Proper articulation is an important thing.

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I have difficulty parsing speech when two people are speaking to me at once. I can usually parse speech directed to me with other random speech around. Though sometimes that is tricky, too.

I think I used to be better at this, but maybe it’s just a natural regression. Not a sign of more significant problems. Hopefully. Maybe also be a result of the tumor they removed (benign, but they had to go in and get it to test it).

Mom having dementia is worrying since now I have a family history (mom was the first, according to me aunt). It accelerated pretty rapidly once we noticed it, culminating in an ischemic stroke.