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Dementia often affects memory, thinking, behavior and daily functioning — now, a new case study reveals a novel symptom that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Nearly 7 million Americans and more than 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia, an umbrella term that describes several progressive disorders that impact memory and cognition.
While Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, other variations have resulted in surprising symptoms.
For example, a 68-year-old man with a rare form of dementia became deeply fascinated by a particular type of noise — and experts believe shifts like this in sound preference could be a key feature of this recently recognized syndrome.
Two years before his dementia diagnosis, the man — identified only in a medical journal as CP — developed a sudden, intense love for the sound of Spitfire plane engines.
CP lived near an airfield where this specific type of single-seat fighter aircraft frequently flew over.
According to his wife, at the sound of a Spitfire, CP would run outside, wave at the planes and weep with joy. This enthusiasm was reserved for Spitfires, as CP did not react to other plane noise or display an increased interest in aviation as a whole.
CP was eventually diagnosed with behavioral frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, which affects the brain regions in the frontal and temporal lobes and has a relatively young age of onset, with most patients diagnosed between the ages of 45 and 64.
People with FTD have relatively fewer memory problems compared to other forms of dementia. However, like other dementia-related diseases, they could exhibit emotional outbursts, poor manners and excessive familiarity with strangers or go on to have muscular dysfunction.
Actor Bruce Willis’s family famously revealed his FTD diagnosis in 2023.
FTD is divided into three variants: behavioral, non-fluent or semantic.
Behavioral FTD affects behavior and personality, non-fluent FTD impacts speech and semantic FTD affects knowledge and speech processing.
Symptoms of behavioral FTD include deterioration of personality, social disinhibition, apathy, reduced sympathy and empathy, poor judgment, altered food preferences and repetitive behavior.
In addition to his newfound affinity for Spitfire noise, CP’s symptoms included mood swings, emotional indifference, irritability, a lack of impulse control, reduced awareness of and adherence to socially acceptable behavior and a distaste for birdsong and people with high-pitched voices.
CP also developed a sweet tooth and a habit of frequently interrupting people when they were speaking.
He also became hyper-fixated on chess and word searches. While he struggled to recognize the faces of acquaintances, he had no trouble recognizing people’s voices over the telephone and showed no issues with memory recall for language or past events.
CP was ultimately diagnosed with behavioral FTD, but the study authors believe he has a fourth variant of the condition, referred to as the right temporal variant.
This fourth variant is so named because tissue loss in the brain is primarily confined to the right temporal lobe, an area associated with conceptual understanding and the processing of nonverbal information, such as social cues.
Apropos of this, an MR scan of CP’s brain revealed selective atrophy and tissue loss in his right temporal lobe.
Experts say right temporal FTD includes a mix of symptoms associated with behavioral and semantic variants, but an exact definition has yet to be established.
Still, CP’s case has shed light on right temporal FTD, and the study’s authors note that the intensity of his fixations could become a defining feature of the condition.
CP’s case also highlights the relationship between dementia and hearing.
While some claim hearing loss causes dementia, study authors note that CP’s symptoms and unusual love for fighter plane noise that developed alongside other dementia symptoms suggest the inverse is also true, that dementia may cause hearing changes.
CP’s constellation of symptoms further illustrates how dementia can alter or inspire obsessions, aversions and changes in preference among patients.
Identifying these symptoms is critical to the diagnosis of FTD and other forms of dementia.
Recent research from the University of Michigan found that millions of Americans likely have dementia symptoms but no formal diagnosis, in part because patients misunderstand their symptoms as normal aging.
There’s no cure for dementia, but early detection can give patients and their caregivers time to plan for the future.
