Neurological Correlates

From the NY Daily News:

Laura Lundquist, 98, indicted in strangling of nursing home roommate Elizabeth Barrow, 100

DAILY NEWS STAFF, Friday, December 11th 2009, 4:28 PM

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/12/11/2009-12-11_laura_lundquist_98_.html#ixzz0ZQ9FoTHS

Nursing home roomies,  women aged 98 and 100, aren’t getting along. The 98 year old continuously complains about the 100 year old, and the 100 year old roommate — otherwise in excellent cognitive health — complains to nursing home staff and seeking a different room mate.

The 100 year old is soon found suffocated, with a plastic bag over her head. The nursing home says its a suicide; the police say its homicide and investigate the 98 year old roommate.  Her criminal defense attorney says this 98 year old suspect has a “long-standing diagnosis of dementia, as well as issues of cognitive impairment.”

A tragedy, and, if the 98 year old room mate is a murderer, a preventable one.  Although dementias come in a variety of flavors, frontotemporal dementia  loosens up the ol’ moral center, and can result in (what I am here dubbing) acquired geriatric sociopathy. (Blogged before passim; like,  here, here, here, and here).  People with this diagnosis should be taken seriously, and presumed to be prone to amoral behavior.  Nursing homes and others in the geriatric-industrial-complex are negligent for not knowing this, imo, and in failing to adequately supervise this 98 year old woman, thereby jeopardizing the 100 year old woman’s health and, as it turns out perhaps, her life. As said by redstiletto69  in the comments of the NY Daily News article:

If this happened in a college dormatory, and someone’s daughter was forced to room with a psychiatrically diagnosed amoral person, all hell would break loose. But, in a nursing home, this probably happens all the time.  Moreover, caregivers are probably not at all educated on this except in terms of  “agitation” or personality changes. My guess is that nursing home staff uber-medicate the agitated/irritable customers, and keep them sedated.  Thus, one possible scenario: the 98 year old slips the 100 year old some meds, the 100 year old passes out, and the 98 year old puts a plastic bag on her head until she suffocates in her sleep.  (I’m guessing how a 98 year old woman could suffocate a 100 year old woman, and have no one notice).

Background on dementias and moral reasoning: Although there are numerous  reasons and molecules for the slide into dementias, brain white matter seems key. White matter has a LIFO inventory method: last white matter wiring created in one’s early 20′s is the first to go in one’s dotage.  And, it’s the late blooming white matter that connects the pieces for morality.  After all,  one thing that sociopaths have in common is frayed wiring in the white matter connecting the  amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex. (Blogged here).

Here are some PUBMED and other research links for frontotemporal dementia and related research:

Theory of Mind in Different Dementia Profiles – This report compares a variety of mild cognitive impairments, and points to frontotemporal dementia patients as those with the most significant problems in social interactions (as measured using Theory of Mind criteria):

. . .The frontal variant frontotemporal dementia patient (a 64-year-old man) showed a clear Theory of Mind deficit, failing in all tasks despite a similar MMSE score (27/30). Errors were based on misattributing beliefs, assuming intentionality in comments that could hurt somebody else’s feelings, and attributing wrong emotions to eye expressions. Memory was unlikely the cause since, in contrast to the patients with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, he always remembered the story and the characters’ names.. . .

“Denkfaulheit” in frontotemporal dementia: a preliminary analysis. (Full paper here, free)

Altered emotional morality in frontotemporal dementia.

Implicit sensitivity to disgust-inducing stimuli in self-neglect FTD patients.

Dieting tendency and eating behavior problems in eating disorder correlate with right frontotemporal and left orbitofrontal cortex: A near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Characteristics of abnormal eating behaviours in frontotemporal lobar degeneration: a cross-cultural survey.

Superior temporal lobe dysfunction and frontotemporal dysconnectivity in subjects at risk of psychosis and in first-episode psychosis.