Changes in sexual behaviour may be linked to general loss of inhibition or to apathy. Failure to consider partners' needs is not selfishness but caused by the changes in the frontal lobes of the brain. These changes in behaviour can be extremely distressing. In the early stages of the disease the person usually remains aware of time and is able to recognise people and places unlike the usual presentation of Alzheimer's disease. However, failure to recognise faces and using objects wrongly sometimes occurs.
Mathematical skills are usually relatively well preserved.
Anybody can develop Pick's disease. It affects men and women alike. Although it typically affects people in their 50s and 60s it has been diagnosed in people from the ages of 20 to 80. Because so little is known at present about the causes of the disease it is impossible to identify risk factors for developing the disease. Research has not been wholly conclusive about the proportion of 'familial' cases of Pick's disease, but it does exist as an inherited disease in some families.