‘The Vanishing Family’ Examines the Toll of Dementia Across Generations

Would you want to know if you carried a gene that would cause dementia, even if there was no cure? And how would that knowledge change the way you lived? These are questions facing one family in which a rare brain disease known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) has passed from one generation to the next. Journalist Robert Kolker, who spent years following their story, exposes the hard choices families face, what dementia reveals about personality and identity, and what FTD research is uncovering about how our brains work. We talk to Kolker about his new book “The Vanishing Family.” How has dementia affected your family?

Guest:

• Robert Kolker, author of “The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate and the Quest to End Dementia” and a contributor to the New York Times Magazine.