Cinema News: How a rare brain disorder changed a mind and a marriage

September 07, 2025 | View in browser

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA - AUGUST 13, 2025 - - Marc Pierrat, 59, center, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2022, participates in an exercise class at Infinity Adult Day Health Care Center in Westlake Village on August 13, 2025. Activity counselor Rhoda Nino, right, runs the class. Pierrat spends the first half of his day at the adult day care center participating in exercise, dance, art and many other activities. Many people with FTD lose the ability to speak altogether, or at least the ability to talk about their internal experience. But even as Marc has lost many of the abilities needed to live independently, he is still able to speak with some eloquence about what it feels like to live with a mind unbuilding itself. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

'I lost me': How frontotemporal dementia changed a mind and a marriage

Marc Pierrat's mind once ran as smoothly as the gears on his endurance bike. But three years after his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, Marc's thoughts are a jumble he can't sort out alone.

"It feels like walking into a closet you haven't been in in a while, and you're looking for something that you know is there, but you don't know where," Marc said.