Artificial Intelligence as a Partner in Preserving Personhood: Recognition, Respect, and Trust in Dementia Care

Background

Dementia is a growing global health challenge that disrupts memory, cognition, and daily living, but its deepest impact lies in how it threatens personhood. Kitwood described personhood as “a standing or status bestowed upon one human being by others in the context of social being, implying recognition, respect, and trust.” Building on this, Buron’s Personhood Model for Dementia Care organizes care into three interconnected levels (sociologic, individual, and biologic personhood), each increasingly at risk as dementia advances.

Sociologic personhood is often first to be disrupted, as changes in memory and communication alter how people are perceived and included in social life. Individual personhood is challenged as communication and psychological continuity weaken, making it harder to preserve identity, roles, and preferences. In advanced stages, biologic personhood is threatened when residents are viewed primarily as bodies to be managed, and task-focused routines eclipse dignity.

In practice, high staff turnover, scarce resources, and task-driven care often push systems toward custodial responses rather than recognition of the whole person. Artificial intelligence (AI) introduces both urgency and possibility in this context. Rather than replacing human connection, AI could act as a scaffold that detects subtle threats to personhood and supports recognition, respect, and trust at each level. From multimodal pain detection to adaptive reminiscence platforms, AI may strengthen personhood where caregiving is stretched thin. Yet empirical data on both the positive and negative impacts of AI in dementia care remain limited, fragmented, and rarely framed within a coherent theoretical model.

Goal

This Research Topic seeks to stimulate rigorous, theory-driven investigations into AI in dementia care, examining both its potential to preserve personhood and its capacity to affect it negatively. Grounded in the Personhood Model, we aim to understand when AI functions as a partner in protecting sociologic belonging, sustaining individual identity, and safeguarding biologic dignity, and when it may instead contribute to depersonalization, inequity, or harm. Our goal is to convene multidisciplinary scholarship from nursing, gerontology, neuroscience, computer science, ethics, and health policy, and to advance a coherent, critical, and ethically grounded research agenda.

Scope

We invite submissions that explore how AI can reinforce each level of personhood across the dementia trajectory, as well as work that critically examines how AI may undermine personhood or introduce new risks, biases, or harms.

Sociologic Personhood (first threatened)
o AI-enabled detection of social withdrawal, isolation, or depersonalization in early dementia
o Conversational agents and social robots that support, but do not replace, human connection
o Predictive analytics to identify institutional risks such as restraint use, isolation, or depersonalizing staff assignments

Individual Personhood (second threatened)
o AI-driven life-story and reminiscence platforms that dynamically preserve and share personal histories
o Natural language processing tools that extend or clarify communication as verbal ability declines
o Adaptive engagement systems (music, art, or sensory therapies) personalized to mood, cognition, and life history

Biologic Personhood (last threatened)
o Multimodal AI tools for detecting pain, dyspnea, or discomfort through facial, voice, and movement analysis
o Wearables and environmental sensors that track sleep, nutrition, hydration, and mobility as “vital signs of personhood”
o Predictive models that anticipate unmet biologic needs before they escalate into behavioral distress

Cross-Cutting Priorities
o Ethical frameworks to ensure AI aligns with dignity, autonomy, and justice
o Implementation studies of AI-supported person-centered care in nursing homes, assisted living, and community settings
o Equity-focused research to guarantee access to AI-enabled personhood support across diverse populations and care systems

Potential Risks and Negative Impacts of AI on Personhood
o Stereotyping and representational harm in AI systems (for example, biased, stigmatizing, or dehumanizing portrayals of people living with dementia)
o Erosion of recognition and respect through over-reliance on AI that displaces human relationships or reduces meaningful interactions
o Trust, consent, and surveillance concerns in AI tools that monitor behavior, affect, or physiology and may undermine autonomy or privacy
o Structural and systemic harms where AI reinforces existing inequalities or embeds narrow cultural assumptions about personhood

By encouraging submissions that highlight both positive and negative impacts, this Research Topic aims to foster a balanced, evidence-based debate about when, how, and under what conditions AI supports, or undermines, the recognition, respect, and trust at the heart of personhood in dementia care.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Personhood, personhood in Dementia, Artificial Intelligence, Dementia Care, Person-centered care, Ethical AI in dementia, Artificial intelligence in dementia care, Natural language processing (NLP)

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.