Date Time Imaging helps understand empathy loss in dementia A patient with frontotemporal dementia discovers his grandson’s birthday cake in the fridge. He doesn’t think twice before getting out a knife and fork and eating every last piece an hour before the birthday party is set to begin. For patients with this early-onset neurodegenerative disease, some of the first symptoms are a profound loss of inhibition and empathy, which leads to a change in social behaviour that is completely out of character. “He wasn’t thinking about his grandson at all; and typically, that loss of empathy extends even for those things where empathy is usually most robust, for example toward pets or grandchildren,” said Dr. Elizabeth Finger, associate professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and a neurologist at St. Joseph’s Health Care London.