NEW YORK: Does dementia cause someone to steal food off of another’s plate or obsessively eat strange foods and even objects? A team of researchers from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) aimed to better understand the abnormal eating behaviours commonly associated with the disease. Their findings could have implications for bizarre eating patterns in healthy people, too.
“These behaviours are problematic, of course, socially, but also with regard to patients’ health as they tend to gain weight,” said the study’s co-author Marilena Aiello, a cognitive researcher at SISSA, in a statement. “Some people lose weight because they eat a narrow range of foods in an obsessive way. The origin of food anomalies in frontotemporal dementia is likely due to many factors. It may involve an alteration of the nervous system, characterised by an altered assessment of the body’s signals, such as hunger, satiety, and appetite.”