Dr. Bruce Miller, in his lecture at the neuroscience seminar last Tuesday, spoke about the relationship between change in production of art abilities and progression of dementia. According to his research, Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients typically begin to produce more abstract, less realistic artwork, while frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients produce more realistic, less abstract pieces. In addition, FTD patients show a marked preservation in ability to copy and reproduce artwork with normal accuracy, while AD patients exhibit the opposite response. The AD patients' response to progression of the disease stems from a decrease in "precision and attention to spatial relationships." Dr. Miler also argued that encouraging patients with specific types AD or FTD to produce artwork may provide a new outlet for rehabilitation or, at the least, slow the progression of the disease through increase use of the neural networks.
Having volunteered at a daycare home for the elderly with dementia for quite some time, and there observing and assisting with the art programs, Dr. Miller's presentation has caused me to make a few connections. The daycare center houses patients with a huge spectrum of disease progressions, from early onset to late stages, and of almost every specific subtype of dementia. Though I am never told the personal information or specific dementia type of any of the patients, I am now starting to see the differences among them. The seniors are given the freedom to engage in almost any kind of artwork desired, from painting to creating 3D with paper mache. For a long time I've noticed that some really are exceptionally good artists, though when asking about their histories they claim to have no artistic background. I now also can clearly see a pattern of realism in most of their pieces. For example, one ongoing project had the patients create paper mache figures of humans, which were then painted. While some of the finished works held zero resemblance to a human, with green splashes of paint where the eyes should be and perhaps a figure of a mouth on the neck, others were near perfect and even beautiful, far better than anything I could accomplish. Further, about the paintings they made on a day to day basis, many were extremely abstract and often resembled finger paintings of a preschool student. Others represented relatively nice scenes of parks with people playing or homes with all the typical components and yard figures, such as a tree house or garden.
Using Dr. Miller's lecture to guide "my diagnosis" of the elderly, I now can pretty clearly label many of the patients as having either FTD or AD according to the type of artwork they produce. That being said, many are quite difficult to label because they generate such a broad spectrum of art or perhaps just art that lies somewhere between realistic and abstract. One interesting quality that I might now look to note among patients is the decrease in "attention to spatial relationships" that Miller spoke of. Having been at the home for quite some time and getting to know many personally, I will now be able to watch as their artwork progresses with time. Perhaps some will show a decrease in the spatial relationships between objects in their artwork, while others might show a marked increase in skill. Whatever the case may be, being with the patients firsthand now holds even more interest for me because I can apply more knowledge about dementia to what I observe in reality.
Sources
Dr. Bruce Miller's Loyola Neuroscience Seminar Lecture
Miller, Bruce and Hou, Craig. "Portraits of Artists: Emergence of Visual Creativity in Dementia." 2004.
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