Could Changes in Sense of Humor Indicate Dementia Risk?

Changes in sense of humor could be a sign of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (BVFTD), a common form of dementia among individuals in their 50s no characterized by memory loss.

To explore the relationship between humor and dementia risk, researchers queried the friends and relatives of 48 patients with various forms of frontaltemporal dementia and 21 healthy individuals about the participants’ sense of humor.
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The questionnaires ranked the participants’ appreciation of various comedy styles (i.e. Slapstick, satire, absurdist) and whether they had noticed changes in the participants’ sense of humor in the past 15 years.

Overall, individuals with BVFTD were more likely to have inappropriate senses of humor and prefer slapstick humor than healthy individuals. Friends and relatives of those with BVFTD reported changes in the participants’ sense of humor a minimum of 9 years before the presentation of symptoms. The same was true for participants with Alzheimers disease.

“Altered sense of humor is particularly salient in BVFTD and semantic dementia, but also frequent in Alzheimers disease and progressive nonfluent aphasia. Humor may be a sensitive probe of social cognitive impairment in dementia, with diagnostic, biomarker, and social implications,” they concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Clark CN, Nicholas JM, Gordon E, et al. Altered sense of humor in dementia. J Alzheimers Dis. 2015 Sep 24;49(1):111-9.