Frontotemporal dementia begins in very small areas of the frontal lobe of the brain that are involved with social intelligence, particularly our ability to inhibit impulses (fig. 5.10). The disorder was once considered impossible to distinguish from Alzheimer’s disease in a living person, but today that is no longer true. Frontotemporal dementia commonly results in profoundly disordered social behavior and moral reasoning. People may commit uncharacteristic antisocial acts, such as shoplifting.
