Brain Atrophy and Frontotemporal Dementia
Yes, frontotemporal dementia (FTD) causes atrophy in the brain. Brain atrophy can be detected using neuroimaging techniques such as MRI. It is a characteristic feature of both the sporadic FTD and familial FTD.
Usually, neuronal loss caused by FTD leads to atrophy in multiple brain areas including the frontal, temporal and limbic areas. In addition to these, FTD can cause the atrophy of subcortical regions in the striatal and thalamic grey matter regions. Interestingly, a specific subtype of FTD caused by the accumulation of fused in sarcoma protein has been associated with severe caudate atrophy. According to correlation studies, the degree of brain atrophy is associated with the severity of the disease. The brain atrophy can be detected using neuroimaging techniques such as MRI. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].