Kawakami I, Arai T, Shinagawa S, et al. - This study was undertaken to examine early symptoms in neuropathologically proven frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Researchers retrospectively examined the clinical records for the neuropathology of 39 behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and 6 semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) patients to find symptoms emerging within two years of the first clinically obvious changes. Apathy or inertia is seen in over 50% of bvFTD patients, while distinct language features appear early in svPPA. In each pathological background, specific symptoms have a tendency to emerge in the early stage of frontotemporal lobar degeneration which may reflect the morphological features and pathological progression. They may also help stratify patients for future therapeutic trials based on the proteinopathies.