Portraits of Artists
Creativity in Dementia
Bruce L. Miller, M.D.
A.W. & Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished
Professor of Neurology
Clinical Director, Memory and Aging Center
University of California at San Francisco
Presented by
the Penn Humanities Forum and
Penn Institute on Aging
Wednesday
• March 1, 2006 • 5:00 pm
17
Logan Hall, 249 South 36th Street
Free. Public
invited.
Dementia is a progressive disorder that
slowly takes away higher cognitive functions. Yet in
rare instances new skills develop in their place. People
whose aphasia erodes their language function, for example,
sometimes display a newfound artistic ability.
Using paintings by patients with Alzheimer's
disease and progressive aphasia, noted Alzheimer's researcher
Bruce Miller, M.D., describes the effects of dementia
and their implications concerning brain evolution and
the neurological sources of creativity.
Bruce L. Miller, MD,
is a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University
of California at San Francisco (UCSF) where he holds
the A.W. & Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Chair.
He is the clinical director of the aging and dementia
program at UCSF and heads the Alzheimer's Disease Center.
For nearly two decades, Dr. Miller also has been the
scientific director for the John Douglas French Foundation
for Alzheimer's Disease.
Dr. Miller is a behavioral neurologist
with a special interest in brain imaging and function.
The dementia program he directs at UCSF sees approximately
400 new patients every year and follows many of these
patients over time. A particular interest of his, frontotemporal
dementia, often strikes people in their 50s. The disease
destroys the ability of neurons in the brain to communicate
with each other, causing the neurons to die and disappear.
There is no known treatment or cure for the disease,
and researchers don't know its cause.
Through his work with these patients,
Dr. Miller has discovered a small but remarkable subset
of patients whose artistic skills blossom after the
disease sets in. For these patients, visual or musical
creativity emerges despite the progression of language
and social impairment. These extraordinary patients
offer a window into the brain's basis for creativity.
Miller's work suggests much about the latent potential
in the brain, and the unusual circumstances it can take
to reveal it.
Dr. Miller is the author of a recent book
The Human Frontal Lobes. His work has been
published in the journals of Neurology, Archives
of Neurology, Journal of International Neuropsychological
Society, Brain, Lancet, and British Journal
of Psychiatry.
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Suggested Reading
UCSF Memory & Aging Center,
Patient
Art.
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