Until two years ago, Deb Jobe would never have called herself an artist. All her previous attempts at drawing looked like crude stick figures, says her husband, Jon. But ever since her diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) associated with corticobasal syndrome (CBS) in 2022, Jobe has tapped into a creative side that continues to surprise and delight her and her family.
FTD affects about 60,000 people in the United States and is the most common form of dementia for people under 60, according to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration. Both actor Bruce Willis and talk show host Wendy Williams were recently diagnosed with the condition. In FTD, the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain are injured, causing changes in behavior, personality, and speech depending on which part of the brain is affected. CBS is the name for a group of signs and symptoms caused by the shrinking of areas of the brain that process information and control movement, resulting in problems like rigidity, tremor, involuntary contractions, and twitching.
Jobe discovered her expressive talents when her sister-in-law gave her an adult coloring book and colored pencils. Initially Jobe simply filled in the outlined design, but she soon began drawing freehand with colored pencils and pastels. Her first piece was a rose with layers of pink petals. She drew a pastel galaxy for her grandson and is working on a spiky mythical dragon for her husband. In addition to colored pencils and pastels, Jobe uses watercolors, markers, and oil pastels.
“I've found a lot of peace doing art. It's very calming,” says Jobe, who is 58 and lives in St. Louis. Drawing takes her mind off everything else, says Jon. “Her art generates positive vibes. It brings her joy.”
The emergence of creative abilities after a diagnosis of FTD is not entirely uncommon, says Bruce Miller, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Miller has studied the connection between art and FTD since 1996.
“We think that loss of function in the front of the brain in FTD activates the back of the brain,” says Dr. Miller, who was one of the authors of a study on the topic in JAMA Neurology in 2023. “We've watched people who didn't have an interest in any type of art become prolific in visual art. It doesn't last forever, but we need to work with patients in different stages of neurodegenerative conditions on not only their weaknesses but also their strengths.”
In the JAMA Neurology study, Dr. Miller and researchers from several institutions reviewed the medical records of 689 people with FTD and found increased or altered creative output in 17. Most painted, but some drew, sculpted, made pottery, or quilted. To understand the brain changes in the artistic group, the researchers compared them to a group of patients with FTD who were not creative and a healthy control group. All three groups underwent MRIs. The two groups with FTD had reduced volume in their left temporal lobes, but the decreased brain volume was more pronounced in the artistic group. In the control group, the scientists found that people who had less activity in the temporal lobe regions affected by FTD had more activity in an area of the brain involved in visual association (the dorsomedial occipital lobe). As the disease damages the temporal lobe, it may exert less control over areas involved in visual associations, the authors surmised.
To test this idea, they observed brain changes in one patient with FTD using positron emission tomography imaging. As the patient's dementia worsened, her frontal and temporal lobes became noticeably less active, and the areas involved in visual association became more active.
In a 2021 review in the Journal of Neural Transmission, the authors looked at case studies of people with various forms of FTD and found that creativity emerged two to eight years after first symptoms, depending on the variation. They also noted that in the beginning, the patients would depict objects and themes concretely and realistically. Over time, the paintings would become more abstract or symbolic. The authors theorized that the expressive output was an attempt to communicate an inner life or a form of healing. In FTD, deeper areas of the brain degenerate, while the visual, auditory, and motor cortex are relatively undamaged, which may encourage creativity. This ability tends to decline as the disease progresses and patients become more physically impaired, the authors wrote.
A play called UnRavelled by Jake Broder, a visiting artist in 2019 at UCSF's Memory and Aging Center, explores the relationship between the Canadian scientist and painter Anne Adams and the French composer Maurice Ravel, both of whom had a type of FTD called primary progressive aphasia, which affects the ability to communicate. “The disease apparently altered circuits in their brains, changing the connections between the front and back parts and resulting in a torrent of creativity,” says Dr. Miller.
Deb Jobe no longer drives, rides a bike, or cooks, and she walks with a cane and wears a brace on her leg. But making art every day gives her a sense of accomplishment. “I've lost a lot for someone so young,” says Jobe, who was a customer relations manager before her diagnosis. “But with my drawings, I can do something again. I would hate to lose that.”
