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Empathy and emotion recognition in semantic dementia: A case report
Abstract
Recent studies have demonstrated that patients suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) show impairments in empathy and emotional processing. In this study, we examined two different aspects of these abilities in a patient with semantic dementia (SD), a variant of FTLD. The first aspect was the assessment of the cognitive and emotional components of empathy through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The second was the naming and comprehension of emotions using the Ekman 60 Faces Test. The patient's emotion word knowledge was spared and the emotional aspects of empathy preserved. Conversely, the patient performed below average for all of the basic emotions when an emotion word had to be matched with a picture. When picture-to-picture matching was tested, however, the patient was able to recognize happiness. This case is a good example of a dissociation of covert and overt emotional functioning in SD. Results are discussed in terms of the impaired empathic behavior and emotional functioning in FTLD.
... Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a heterogenous group of neurodegenerative disorders, characterised by predominant atrophy in the frontal and temporal lobes [1][2][3]. The disease spectrum encompasses a variety of clinical syndromes: behavioural variant FTD (bvFTD), identifiable by altered personality and behavioural change, as well as a number of language variants, collectively referred to as primary progressive aphasia (PPA), distinguished by progressive deficits in word retrieval, comprehension or speech production [2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Overlapping motor syndromes such as FTD with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (FTD-ALS) also occur within the spectrum [11][12][13][14]. ...
... Despite various underlying pathologies, contributory genes, and clinical presentations, abnormal behaviours and social-emotional dysfunction are central to FTD syndromes, with a diminished capacity for empathy presenting as a core clinical symptom [12,13,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. Empathy is widely recognised as the ability to 'put oneself in another's shoes', interpret others' emotions and appropriately respond to their experience [4,23,26]. Accordingly, it forms a fundamental aspect of social relatedness, facilitating the formation of strong foundations with those in one's social environment [26][27][28][29]. Manifesting as interpersonal coldness and a reduced social interest, the empathy deficits seen in people with FTD are arguably one of the most distressing behaviours experienced by relatives and caregivers, demonstrating the need for clinical research [20,29,30]. ...
... Although altered social conduct and personality changes manifest in PPA and FTD-ALS [4,11,13,[21][22][23][24][25]38], the syndromes are predominantly characterised by progressive language and speech difficulties, J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f or by impaired motor functioning, respectively [4,14,22,23]. The empathy literature for FTD-ALS is limited, whilst inconsistent findings have been reported in regards to which components of empathy are affected in PPA, e.g. ...
Background
Reduced empathy is a common symptom in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Although empathy deficits have been extensively researched in sporadic cases, few studies have explored the differences in familial forms of FTD.
Methods
Empathy was examined using a modified version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (mIRI) in 676 participants from the Genetic FTD Initiative: 216 mutation-negative controls, 192 C9orf72 expansion carriers, 193 GRN mutation carriers and 75 MAPT mutation carriers. Using global scores from the CDR® plus NACC FTLD, mutation carriers were divided into three groups, asymptomatic (0), very mildly symptomatic/prodromal (0.5), or fully symptomatic (1 or more). The mIRI Total score, as well as the subscores of Empathic Concern (EC) and Perspective Taking (PT) were assessed. Linear regression models with bootstrapping were used to assess empathy ratings across genetic groups, as well as across phenotypes in the symptomatic carriers. Neural correlates of empathy deficits were examined using a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis.
Results
All fully symptomatic groups scored lower on the mIRI Total, EC, and PT when compared to controls and their asymptomatic or prodromal counterparts (all p < 0.001). Prodromal C9orf72 expansion carriers also scored significantly lower than controls on the mIRI Total score (p = 0.046). In the phenotype analysis, all groups (behavioural variant FTD, primary progressive aphasia and FTD with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) scored significantly lower than controls (all p<0.007). VBM revealed an overlapping neural correlate of the mIRI Total score across genetic groups in the orbitofrontal lobe but with additional involvement in the temporal lobe, insula and basal ganglia in both the GRN and MAPT groups, and uniquely more posterior regions such as the parietal lobe and thalamus in the GRN group, and medial temporal structures in the MAPT group.
Conclusions
Significant empathy deficits present in genetic FTD, particularly in symptomatic individuals and those with a bvFTD phenotype, while prodromal deficits are only seen using the mIRI in C9orf72 expansion carriers.
... This decline has been related to right-sided temporal atrophy (). However, in a recent case report, Calabria et al. (2009) showed that the cognitive component of empathy is more impaired than the emotional one in the presence of left-sided temporal atrophy. Their finding suggests that the cognitive aspects of empathy (and, by extension, of affective ToM) are sustained by the left temporal lobe. ...
... test, we found that SD patients performed significantly more poorly than healthy controls on both basic and complex emotions recognition. Regarding the basic emotion condition, our results are consistent with numerous previous studies showing an emotional recognition processing disorder in SD via facial expression tests ( Calabria et al., 2009). Moreover, authors have found that negative emotion recognition is particularly badly affected. ...
... This decline has been related to right-sided temporal atrophy (). However, in a recent case report, Calabria et al. (2009) showed that the cognitive component of empathy is more impaired than the emotional one in the presence of left-sided temporal atrophy. Their finding suggests that the cognitive aspects of empathy (and, by extension, of affective ToM) are sustained by the left temporal lobe.). ...
Semantic dementia is characterized by semantic deficits and behavioural abnormalities that occur in the wake of bilateral inferolateral and predominantly left-sided anterior temporal lobe atrophy. The temporal poles have been shown to be involved in theory of mind, namely the ability to ascribe cognitive and affective mental states to others that regulates social interactions by predicting and interpreting human behaviour. However, very few studies have examined theory of mind in semantic demen-tia. In this study, we investigated both cognitive and affective theory of mind in a group of patients with semantic dementia, using separate objective and subjective assessment tasks. Results provided objective evidence of an impact of semantic dementia on cognitive and affective theory of mind, consistent with the patients' atrophy in the left temporal lobe and hypometabolism in the temporal lobes and the medial frontal cortex. However, the subjective assessment of theory of mind suggested that awareness of the affective but not cognitive theory of mind deficit persists into the moderate stage of the disease.
... Growing evidence documents deficits in emotion perception in semantic dementia (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Rosen et al., 2004), but no research to date has specifically addressed the hypothesis that impairments in concept knowledge contribute to impairments in discrete emotion perception. Patients with semantic dementia have difficulties labeling facial expressions of emotion (Calabria et al., 2009;Rosen et al., 2004), but such findings are typically interpreted as evidence that patients can understand the meaning of emotional faces but perform poorly on experimental tasks due to an inability to manipulate labels (Miller et al., 2012). ...
... Growing evidence documents deficits in emotion perception in semantic dementia (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Rosen et al., 2004), but no research to date has specifically addressed the hypothesis that impairments in concept knowledge contribute to impairments in discrete emotion perception. Patients with semantic dementia have difficulties labeling facial expressions of emotion (Calabria et al., 2009;Rosen et al., 2004), but such findings are typically interpreted as evidence that patients can understand the meaning of emotional faces but perform poorly on experimental tasks due to an inability to manipulate labels (Miller et al., 2012). If this were the case, language would have an impact on the communication of discrete emotion perception, but not the understanding of emotional facial behaviors. ...
... Previous research has documented general decreases in discrete emotion perception accuracy in patients with semantic dementia when they are asked to pair faces with words (Calabria et al., 2009;Miller et al., 2012;Rosen et al., 2002). To date, these data have been interpreted with the understanding that language is epiphe-nomenal to emotion: Deficits observed on discrete emotion perception tasks are thought to stem from difficulties labeling stimuli, not from difficulties in discrete emotion perception per se (e.g., Miller et al., 2012). ...
For decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have hypothesized that the ability to perceive emotions on others' faces is inborn, prelinguistic, and universal. Concept knowledge about emotion has been assumed to be epiphenomenal to emotion perception. In this article, we report findings from 3 patients with semantic dementia that cannot be explained by this "basic emotion" view. These patients, who have substantial deficits in semantic processing abilities, spontaneously perceived pleasant and unpleasant expressions on faces, but not discrete emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, or sadness, even in a task that did not require the use of emotion words. Our findings support the hypothesis that discrete emotion concept knowledge helps transform perceptions of affect (positively or negatively valenced facial expressions) into perceptions of discrete emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, and sadness. These findings have important consequences for understanding the processes supporting emotion perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
... In particular, it has become common practice in recent psychological studies on empathy to combine the Perspective Taking and the Fantasy subscales of the IRI into a single "Cognitive Empathy" factor, and the Empathic Concern and the Personal Distress subscales into a single "Affective Empathy" factor (e.g., Bock & Hosser, 2014;Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Cusi, Macqueen, Spreng, & McKinnon, 2011;Dziobek et al., 2011;Harari, Shamay-Tsoory, Ravid, & Levkovitz, 2010;Hengartner et al., 2013;Hooker et al., 2010;Maurage et al., 2011;Shamay-Tsoory, Aharon-Peretz, & Perry, 2009;Shamay-Tsoory, Shur, Harari, & Levkovitz, 2007;Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, Goldsher, Berger, & Aharon-Peretz, 2004). This "cognitive-affective" split of the IRI has then been used to examine cognitive and affective empathy in the context of personality disorders, alcoholism, dementia, depression, recidivism, schizophrenia, as well as in neuroimaging studies aiming to identify the neural correlates of empathy and its subcomponents. ...
... In line with the practice espoused in behavioral studies as discussed above, the neuroscience community has, equally problematically, used this two-factor model of the IRI in work attempting to localize cognitive and affective empathy to specific brain regions. For example, Calabria et al. (2009) examined empathy and emotional processing in a case study of a patient diagnosed with semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative disorder that selectively affects left frontotemporal cortex and which is marked by the progressive loss of knowledge about the world (i.e., semantic memory). Using the two-factor model of the scale, Calabria et al. (2009) found that the patient showed deficits in cognitive but not affective empathy, compared with family members' assessments of her empathy levels before the onset of the dementia. ...
... For example, Calabria et al. (2009) examined empathy and emotional processing in a case study of a patient diagnosed with semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative disorder that selectively affects left frontotemporal cortex and which is marked by the progressive loss of knowledge about the world (i.e., semantic memory). Using the two-factor model of the scale, Calabria et al. (2009) found that the patient showed deficits in cognitive but not affective empathy, compared with family members' assessments of her empathy levels before the onset of the dementia. These findings were then used to establish hypotheses about the likely functional-anatomical locus of affective empathy processes in the brain, given the patient's deficits and the response patterns on the IRI observed in patients with other kinds of neurodegenerative disorders. ...
One aspect of higher order social cognition is empathy, a psychological construct comprising a cognitive (recognizing emotions) and an affective (responding to emotions) component. The complex nature of empathy complicates the accurate measurement of these components. The most widely used measure of empathy is the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). However, the factor structure of the IRI as it is predominantly used in the psychological literature differs from Davis's original four-factor model in that it arbitrarily combines the subscales to form two factors: cognitive and affective empathy. This two-factor model of the IRI, although popular, has yet to be examined for psychometric support. In the current study, we examine, for the first time, the validity of this alternative model. A confirmatory factor analysis showed poor model fit for this two-factor structure. Additional analyses offered support for the original four-factor model, as well as a hierarchical model for the scale. In line with previous findings, females scored higher on the IRI than males. Our findings indicate that the IRI, as it is currently used in the literature, does not accurately measure cognitive and affective empathy and highlight the advantages of using the original four-factor structure of the scale for empathy assessments.
© The Author(s) 2015.
... A larger number of studies have addressed emotion recognition in svPPA, revealing deficits in the identification of facial emotional expressions from static photographs, particularly for negative emotions (Binney et al., 2016a;Calabria et al., 2009;Hsieh et al., 2012bHsieh et al., , 2013Hutchings et al., 2015;Irish et al., 2013;Johnen et al., 2018;Kamminga et al., 2015;Kumfor et al., 2018Kumfor et al., 2016Kumfor et al., , 2011Lindquist et al., 2014;Miller et al., 2012;Omar et al., 2011b;Perry et al., 2001;Rosen et al., 2004Rosen et al., , 2002b. In contrast to nfvPPA, svPPA patients do not improve their performance when stimulus salience is increased (Ekman Caricatures) (Kumfor et al., , 2011. ...
... In this line, Irish et al. (2013) also found that right svPPA patients were significantly impaired in affective empathy as compared to left svPPA, in the context of a similar cognitive and linguistic profile. Lastly, a single-case study reported impaired cognitive empathy but preserved affective empathy in a left svPPA patient (Calabria et al., 2009). Taken together, these findings suggest that empathic deficits are more common in right svPPA, and not related to language impairments. ...
Although primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is clinically typified by linguistic impairments, emerging evidence highlights the presence of early deficits in social cognition. This review systematically describes the latter patterns, specifying their relation to the characteristic linguistic dysfunctions and atrophy patterns of non-fluent, semantic, and logopenic variants of the disease (nfvPPA, svPPA, and lvPPA, respectively), relative to closely related dementia types. Whereas the evidence on lvPPA proves scant, studies on nfvPPA and svPPA patients show consistent deficits in emotion recognition, theory of mind, and empathy. Notably, these seem to be intertwined with language impairments in nfvPPA, but they prove primary and independent of language disturbances in svPPA. Also, only the profile of svPPA resembles that of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, probably reflecting the overlap of fronto-temporal disruptions in both conditions. In short, the neurocognitive relationship between linguistic and socio-cognitive deficits cannot be precisely predicated for PPA as a whole; instead, specific links must be acknowledged in each variant. These emergent patterns pave the way for fruitful dimensional research in the field.
... Nonverbal communication is a crucial facet of social interaction, and in its context facial expressions hold a prominent role, as defective emotion recognition can lead to ambiguous or inappropriate social interactions [2]. The ability to recognize emotional facial expressions has been widely explored both in healthy subjects (see for reviews [3,4]) and in many psychiatric and neurological condition [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. ...
... Patients affected by Alzheimer's dementia are mostly characterized by an overall emotion recognition impairment irrespective of the stimuli affective valence [14] and similar findings have been reported in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) [15][16][17][18]. In the context of the frontotemporal lobar degeneration spectrum of disorders, other clinical subtypes, as progressive supranuclear palsy [19] and primary progressive aphasia [20,21] may present emotion recognition impairments, even though these are not core features of the clinical presentation. ...
The Ekman 60-Faces (EK-60F) Test is a well-known neuropsychological tool assessing emotion recognition from facial expressions. It is the most employed task for research purposes in psychiatric and neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases, such as the behavioral variant of Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD). Despite its remarkable usefulness in the social cognition research field, to date, there are still no normative data for the Italian population, thus limiting its application in a clinical context. In this study, we report procedures and normative data for the Italian version of the test. A hundred and thirty-two healthy Italian participants aged between 20 and 79 years with at least 5 years of education were recruited on a voluntary basis. They were administered the EK-60F Test from the Ekman and Friesen series of Pictures of Facial Affect after a preliminary semantic recognition test of the six basic emotions (i.e., anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise). Data were analyzed according to the Capitani procedure [1]. The regression analysis revealed significant effects of demographic variables, with younger, more educated, female subjects showing higher scores. Normative data were then applied to a sample of 15 bvFTD patients which showed global impaired performance in the task, consistently with the clinical condition. We provided EK-60F Test normative data for the Italian population allowing the investigation of global emotion recognition ability as well as selective impairment of basic emotions recognition, both for clinical and research purposes.
... In svPPA, the studies on emotional recognition have focused on facial expressions. As a whole, results of these studies suggest that patients with svPPA show difficulty to recognize all basic emotions (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Miller et al., 2012;Perry et al., 2001). The recognition of emotions conveyed by music in svPPA remains largely unknown. ...
... In svPPA, the studies on emotional recognition (for a review, see Kumfor & Piguet, 2012) have focused on facial expressions. According to some of these studies (Calabria et al., 2009;Miller et al., 2012;Perry et al., 2001), some svPPA patients show difficulty to recognize all basic emotions, while others (Hsieh et al., , 2004Rosen et al., 2002) show difficulties restricted to (or more marked for) facial expressions conveying negative emotions (sadness, anger, and fear). One of the four svPPA patients reported by Perry et al. (2001), with predominantly left temporal lobe atrophy, had severe semantic impairment but normal performance on recognition tasks on emotional facial expression and emotional prosody. ...
Music can induce particular emotions and activate semantic knowledge. In the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), semantic memory is impaired as a result of anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy. Semantics is responsible for the encoding and retrieval of factual knowledge about music, including associative and emotional attributes. In the present study, we report the performance of two individuals with svPPA in three experiments. NG with bilateral ATL atrophy and ND with atrophy largely restricted to the left ATL. Experiment 1 assessed the recognition of musical excerpts and both patients were unimpaired. Experiment 2 studied the emotions conveyed by music and only NG showed impaired performance. Experiment 3 tested the association of semantic concepts to musical excerpts and both patients were impaired. These results suggest that the right ATL seems essential for the recognition of emotions conveyed by music and that the left ATL is involved in binding music to semantics. They are in line with the notion that the ATLs are devoted to the binding of different modality-specific properties and suggest that they are also differentially involved in the processing of factual and emotional knowledge associated with music.
... Alterations in emotional expression (emotional blunting) and empathy are central features of bvFTD. Although not a diagnostic feature for the disease, substantial evidence shows that emotion processing is also affected in SD (Calabria et al. 2009;Neary et al. 1998;Snowden et al. 2001;Perry et al. 2001;Rosen et al. 2004;Rosen et al. 2002b;Piguet et al. 2011a;Rascovsky et al. 2007). Studies in bvFTD, SD and, less so, PNFA have demonstrated marked impairment in social cognition, including aspects of theory of mind, empathy, emotion recognition, emotion regulation and physiological responses to emotional stimuli Kipps and Hodges 2006;Werner et al. 2007;Kipps et al. 2009a;Kipps et al. 2009b;Sturm et al. 2006;Rosen et al. 2002a). ...
... Although cases with predominant right-sided atrophy are rare, existing evidence is consistent with the right hemisphere model, with right SD patients performing more poorly than left SD patients on emotion recognition tasks, particularly so for negative emotions (Perry et al. 2001;Gorno-Tempini et al. 2004b). This model, however, does not fully account for the marked emotion recognition deficits also experienced by SD patients with predominantly left-sided atrophy (Rosen et al. 2004;Calabria et al. 2009). It may be that the absolute degree of right temporal lobe atrophy is the determining factor, regardless of the severity of atrophy in the left hemisphere. ...
Accurate processing of emotional information is a critical component of appropriate social interactions and inter-personal relationships. Disturbance of emotion processing is present in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and is a clinical feature in two of the three subtypes: behavioural-variant FTD and semantic dementia. Emotion processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia, the third FTD subtype, is thought to be mostly preserved, although current evidence is scant. This paper reviews the literature on emotion recognition, reactivity and expression in FTD subtypes, although most studies focus on emotion recognition. The relationship between patterns of emotion processing deficits and patterns of neural atrophy are considered, by integrating evidence from recent neuroimaging studies. The review findings are discussed in the context of three contemporary theories of emotion processing: the limbic system model, the right hemisphere model and a multimodal system of emotion. Results across subtypes of FTD are most consistent with the multimodal system model, and support the presence of somewhat dissociable neural correlates for basic emotions, with strongest evidence for the emotions anger and sadness. Poor emotion processing is evident in all three sub-types, although deficits are more widespread than what would be predicted based on studies in healthy cohorts. Studies that include behavioural and imaging data are limited. Future investigations combining these approaches will help improve the understanding of the neural network underlying emotion processing. Presently, longitudinal investigations of emotion processing in FTD are lacking, and studies investigating emotion processing over time are critical to understand the clinical manifestations of disease progression in FTD.
... The right hemisphere model suggests that there is a strong lateralization of emotion processing toward the right hemisphere. Even though many previous studies have demonstrated that right-side lesions are critical to the processing of emotions (e.g., Borod et al., 1998;Perry et al., 2001), this model cannot fully explain emotional recognition deficits in patients with left-side atrophy (e.g., Calabria et al., 2009). Ekman (1999) has proposed the multisystem model of emotion, which states that unique patterns of neural mechanisms trigger each emotion. ...
... There were no differences among the HC, MCI, AD, and FTD in the current study. This result corroborates those of previous studies indicating that positive emotions are likely preserved in patients with neuropsychiatric disease (Rosen et al., 2002(Rosen et al., , 2006Kessels et al., 2007;Calabria et al., 2009). However, Hsieh et al. (2012b) study demonstrated that positive emotions could differentiate FTD and HC groups, while the present study showed no significant difference. ...
Background: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is impaired in individuals with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) when compared to healthy older adults. Since deficits in emotion recognition are closely related to caregiver burden or social interactions, researchers have fundamental interest in FER performance in patients with dementia.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the performance profiles of six facial emotions (i.e., fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, and happiness) and neutral faces measured among Korean healthy control (HCs), and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD, and FTD. Additionally, the neuroanatomical correlates of facial emotions were investigated.
Methods: A total of 110 (33 HC, 32 MCI, 32 AD, 13 FTD) older adult participants were recruited from two different medical centers in metropolitan areas of South Korea. These individuals underwent an FER test that was used to assess the recognition of emotions or absence of emotion (neutral) in 35 facial stimuli. Repeated measures two-way analyses of variance were used to examine the distinct profiles of emotional recognition among the four groups. We also performed brain imaging and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) on the participants to examine the associations between FER scores and gray matter volume.
Results: The mean score of negative emotion recognition (i.e., fear, anger, disgust, and sadness) clearly discriminated FTD participants from individuals with MCI and AD and HC [F(3,106) = 10.829, p < 0.001, η² = 0.235], whereas the mean score of positive emotion recognition (i.e., surprise and happiness) did not. A VBM analysis showed negative emotions were correlated with gray matter volume of anterior temporal regions, whereas positive emotions were related to gray matter volume of fronto-parietal regions.
Conclusion: Impairment of negative FER in patients with FTD is cross-cultural. The discrete neural correlates of FER indicate that emotional recognition processing is a multi-modal system in the brain. Focusing on the negative emotion recognition is a more effective way to discriminate healthy aging, MCI, and AD from FTD in older Korean adults.
... In sharp contrast to other psychiatric [9][10][11][12][13] and neuropsychological disorders [14][15][16][17][18], in which social-cognitive competences have already been investigated extensively and for a long time, only recently have researchers and clinicians started to investigate the domain of social cognition in patients with AN. Social cognition is the ability to construct mental representations of the relations that exist between oneself and others and to flexibly use these representations to function effectively in one's social environment [19][20]. ...
... People being assessed are asked to rank their own answers on a five-point Likert scale, with 5 indicating the highest degree of agreement and 1 the highest degree of disagreement with the affirmation expressed in each item. The TAS-20 has a three-factor structure: difficulty in identifying feelings (Factor 1, items 1, 3,6,7,9,13,14), difficulty communicating feelings to other people (Factor 2, items 2, 4, 11, 12, 17), and externally oriented thinking (Factor 3, items 5,8,10,15,16,18,19,20). ...
The findings of the few studies that have to date investigated the way in which individuals with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) navigate their social environment are somewhat contradictory. We undertook this study to shed new light on the social-cognitive profile of patients with AN, analysing Theory of Mind and emotional functioning. Starting from previous evidence on the role of the amygdala in the neurobiology of AN and in the social cognition, we hypothesise preserved Theory of Mind and impaired emotional functioning in patients with AN.
Thirty women diagnosed with AN and thirty-two women matched for education and age were involved in the study. Theory of Mind and emotional functioning were assessed with a set of validated experimental tasks. A measure of perceived social support was also used to test the correlations between this dimension and the social-cognitive profile of AN patients.
The performance of patients with AN is significantly worse than that of healthy controls on tasks assessing emotional functioning, whereas patients' performance is comparable to that of healthy controls on the Theory of Mind task. Correlation analyses showed no relationship between scores on any of the social-cognition tasks and either age of onset or duration of illness. A correlation between social support and emotional functioning was found. This latter result seems to suggest a potential role of social support in the treatment and recovery of AN.
The pattern of results followed the experimental hypothesis. They may be useful to help us better understand the social-cognitive profile of patients with AN and to contribute to the development of effective interventions based on the ways in which patients with AN actually perceive their social environment.
... Se encontró que existen evidencias del reconocimiento de emociones en los diferentes tipos de demencias, pero de igual forma hay un déficit en algunas, pues en lo encontrado hay más acerca de unas demencias que de otras, además no se encontró evidencia de estudios que evalúen el reconocimiento de emociones en las demencias vasculares. Se evidenció que es más difícil identificar emociones negativas, la alegría es una emoción fácil de reconocer (Heitz et al.,2016, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti y Miniussi, 2009, Diehl-Schmid, Pohl, Ruprecht, Wagenpfeil, Foerstl, Kurz, 2007. ...
... En la demencia fronto-temporal variante conductual se encontró que en tareas de selección, apareamiento y denominación presentan déficit en el reconocimiento de emociones (Cossini, Gomez, Rubinstein y Politis, 2016, Tabernero y Politis, 2012, en tareas en donde no haya presencia de la información que los ojos puedan proporcionar a la hora del reconocimiento, se identifica una mayor dificultad en el reconocimiento de las emociones negativas, mientras que para el reconocimiento de la alegría es importante más que todo la región de la boca (Oliver, Virani, Finger y Mitchell, 2014), adicionalmente es importante resaltar que aunque hay un déficit en el reconocimiento de estos pacientes esto no impide que ellos puedan sentir las emociones (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti y Miniussi, 2009 ...
El envejecimiento es un proceso natural y gradual de la vida, en el cual se puede presentar el deterioro cognitivo, que se entiende como la disminución del rendimiento en al menos un dominio cognitivo; los dos grandes grupos de este son el deterioro cognitivo leve y las demencias, que se clasifican dependiendo de sus características y etiología. Las emociones son procesos que involucran el componente vivencial, fisiológico y un comportamiento determinado, a partir de la experiencia de un suceso vital significativo; una de las teorías más reconocidas de éstas es la de Paul Ekman que habla de seis emociones básicas y universales (alegría, tristeza, ira, asco, sorpresa, miedo). El reconocimiento de emociones en pacientes con algún cuadro de deterioro cognitivo se ve afectado; no en todas las demencias se da de la misma forma, debido a que cada demencia tiene sus características. Finalmente, aunque reconocer emociones parecería una tarea fácil, para los pacientes con demencias es una tarea compleja; para un mismo tipo de demencia, incluso el desempeño puede ser diferente según el tipo de tarea.
... Par analogie au biais évoqué pour les DFT, les résultats en faveur d'une préservation des émotions positives peuvent refléter un effet du matériel ( Kumfor & Piguet, 2012). De plus, la préservation de la reconnaissance des émotions positives n'a pas toujours été retrouvée dans les études (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Hsieh, Hornberger, Piguet, & Hodges, 2012;Kumfor et al., 2013). Les déficits de reconnaissance semblent par ailleurs persister lorsque les émotions sont présentées de façon dynamique (Kumfor et al., 2011;Werner et al., 2007) ou qu'elles sont intégrées dans un contexte social Rankin et al., 2009). ...
... Ces difficultés peuvent s'apparenter à la symptomatologie atypique des formes droites de la DS, dans lesquelles une prosopagnosie et des déficits de reconnaissance des émotions sont souvent constatés. Par ailleurs, la littérature rapporte avec abondance les difficultés dans la DS pour labelliser et reconnaître des émotions à partir d'expressions faciales (Calabria et al., 2009;Kumfor et al., 2013;Miller et al., 2012;Omar et al., 2011). Le dysfonctionnement des processus basiques interférerait avec le traitement plus complexe des états mentaux émotionnels. ...
La cognition sociale réfère à l’ensemble des processus qui nous permettent d’interagir et d’adapter nos comportements dans le monde social. Il a été suggéré que les modifications de ces aptitudes, en particulier de la Théorie de l’esprit (TdE), pouvaient être à l’origine des changements comportementaux observés dans le vieillissement normal et pathologique. L’étude de la cognition sociale dans le cadre des dégénérescences lobaires fronto-temporales (DLFT), maladies neurodégénératives associées à des troubles comportementaux importants, prend tout son sens. Toutefois, les interactions entre la TdE et les autres fonctions cognitives demeurent encore incomprises tant sur le plan cognitif que cérébral. L’objectif de cette thèse était de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement conjoint de ces aptitudes en s’appuyant sur l’imagerie cérébrale. En adoptant une perspective écologique, nos résultats soulignent les liens entre les processus qui contribuent aux déficits de TdE et les bases neurales qui les sous-tendent. Ils mettent par ailleurs en évidence des déficits subtils et précoces de la TdE chez des sujets porteurs d’une mutation génétique, responsable du développement d’une forme particulière de DLFT, à la phase présymptomatique de la maladie.
... Although basic facial perception was relatively unaffected, facial emotion recognition was found to be widely impaired in FTLD, as reported elsewhere (e.g., Kemp et al., 2012 ). For example, Calabria and colleagues reported a case of temporal variant FTLD in which impairment of facial emotion recognition was combined with unaffected emotional word knowledge (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009). The present results in the " faux pas " task also indicate ToM impairment in FTLD, with perturbed cognitive and affective inferences. ...
... In contrast, temporal atrophy was generally bilateral in the SD patients studied by Rankin et al. (2005). According to Calabria et al., emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy may involve the right and left hemispheres, respectively (Calabria et al., 2009). There is a need for further investigation of FTD versus SD differences in socioemotional impairment profiles and the neuronal networks involved in empathy components. ...
We explored the value of a battery of socioemotional tasks for differentiating between frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Patients with FTLD (n = 13) or AD (n = 13) and healthy controls (n = 26) underwent a neuropsychological assessment and the socioemotional battery (an empathy questionnaire, an emotion recognition task, and theory of mind tasks). Socioemotional processes were markedly impaired in FTLD but relatively unaffected in mild AD. The computed Socioemotional Index discriminated more accurately between FTLD from AD than behavioral and executive assessments did. Furthermore, impairments in socioemotional processes were correlated with indifference to others.
... Malgré ces distinctions anatomiques, le traitement émotionnel semble altéré de manière précoce dans ces deux pathologies. En effet, il existe un déficit de reconnaissance des émotions qui prédomine sur les émotions négatives, en lien avec l'atrophie droite du cortex orbito-frontal et de l'amygdale [33]. Ce déficit d'identification émotionnelle pourrait refléter une perte d'empathie émotionnelle puisque cette dernière perturberait le processus d'imitation gênant alors la reconnaissance des expressions faciales. ...
Toward a neuropsychology of empathy
The ability to understand emotional states of others and share their feelings, known as empathy, has been related to moral sense, altruism, effective social communication and prosocial behavior. Several theoretical approaches have been developed and recent evidence suggests that two systems underlie empathy: an emotional system and a more advanced cognitive system. The former supports an affective sharing between the empathizer and the target, and this ability is thought to require the mirror neuron system. The cognitive system implies perspective-taking abilities such as theory of mind, self-awareness, inhibitory process and emotion regulation. It remains unclear whether those systems are interacting or independent. A recent study demonstrated a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy following different lesion locations within the frontal lobe. These findings suggest that a lack of empathy could result of different deficits. Although impairment of empathy or its components has been reported in neurodegenerative diseases such as Frontotemporal dementia and Huntington disease, data remain scarce. Future studies could determine the process deficits which underlie behavioral disorders, and afford new perspectives for diagnosis. In addition, this would provide tools suitable for routine clinical practice.
... Further analyses indicate that this deficit was correlated with atrophy of the right amygdale and right OF, the areas most frequently affected in fvFTLD. A case study of a patient with SD showed objectification of emotion recognition deficits (Calabria et al., 2009), with spared emotional word knowledge and preserved emotional aspects of empathy, but below the cut-off for all basic emotions on the standard version of the Ekman 60 Faces Test. ...
This paper reviews findings in three subcomponents of social cognition (i.e., Theory of Mind, facial emotion recognition, empathy) during ageing. Changes over time in social cognition were evaluated in normal ageing and in patients with various neurodegenerative pathologies, such as Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, frontal and temporal variants of frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Parkinson's disease. Findings suggest a decline in social cognition with normal ageing, a decline that is at least partially independent of a more general cognitive or executive decline. The investigation of neurodegenerative pathologies showing specific deficits in Theory of Mind in relation to damage to specific cerebral regions led us to suggest a neural network involved in Theory of Mind processes, namely a fronto-subcortical loop linking the basal ganglia to the regions of the frontal lobes.
... The clinical point of view on social neuroscience aims at establishing relationships between specific neuropathological, neurochemical, and neuropsychological alterations related to neuropsychiatric disorders and levels of social cognitive functioning (e.g. Brüne and Brüne-Cohrs 2006, Calabria et al. 2009, Bara et al. 2011, Adenzato et al. 2012, Kennedy and Adolphs 2012). This Special Issue provides a lifespan perspective on the clinical approach to social neuroscience: almost 30 years of empirical research on mentalizing abilities have passed since the first seminal studies on autism (Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith 1985). ...
... The IRI has been adapted so that the patientʼs spouse was asked to indicate on a 5-point scale how well each of the statements described her husbandʼs behavior both currently and before the onset of the brain injury. Like other authors (see, e.g., Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Lough et al., 2006), we used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test to compare pre-versus postmorbid scores. ...
The temporal poles (TPs) are among the brain regions that are often considered as the brain network sustaining our ability to understand other people's mental states or "Theory of Mind" (ToM). However, so far the functional role of the left and right TPs in ToM is still debated, and it is even not clear yet whether these regions are necessary for ToM. In this study, we tested whether the left TP is necessary for ToM by assessing the mentalizing abilities of a patient (C.M.) diagnosed with semantic dementia. Converging evidence from detailed MRI and (18)F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose PET examinations showed a massive atrophy of the left TP with the right TP being relatively unaffected. Furthermore, C.M.'s atrophy encompassed most regions of the left TP usually activated in neuroimaging studies investigating ToM. Given C.M.'s language impairments, we used a battery of entirely nonverbal ToM tasks. Across five tasks encompassing 100 trials, which probed the patient's ability to attribute various mental states (intentions, knowledge, and beliefs), C.M. showed a totally spared performance. This finding suggests that, despite its consistently observed activation in neuroimaging studies involving ToM tasks, the left TP is not necessary for ToM reasoning, at least in nonverbal conditions and as long as its right counterpart is preserved. Implications for understanding the social abilities of patients with semantic dementia are discussed.
... In prior work, we demonstrated that experimentally decreasing the accessibility of emotion words' semantic meaning, using a procedure called semantic satiation (Tian & Huber, 2010), reduces the accuracy with which participants produce the presumed universal pattern of emotion perception (Lindquist et al., 2006) because words help to shape the underlying perceptual representation of those faces (Gendron et al., 2012). Our current findings are consistent with research on patients with semantic deficits due to progressive neurodegeneration (i.e., semantic dementia) or brain injury (i.e., semantic aphasia) who do not perceive emotions in scowls, pouts, smiles, and so on (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Lindquist, Gendron, Barrett & Dickerson, in press;Roberson, Davidoff, & Braisby, 1999). Even research in young children points to the importance of emotion words in emotion perception, because the presumed universal pattern of emotion perception emerges in young children as they acquire conceptual categories, anchored by words, for emotions (Widen & Russell, 2010). ...
It is widely believed that certain emotions are universally recognized in facial expressions. Recent evidence indicates that Western perceptions (e.g., scowls as anger) depend on cues to U.S. emotion concepts embedded in experiments. Because such cues are standard features in methods used in cross-cultural experiments, we hypothesized that evidence of universality depends on this conceptual context. In our study, participants from the United States and the Himba ethnic group from the Keunene region of northwestern Namibia sorted images of posed facial expressions into piles by emotion type. Without cues to emotion concepts, Himba participants did not show the presumed "universal" pattern, whereas U.S. participants produced a pattern with presumed universal features. With cues to emotion concepts, participants in both cultures produced sorts that were closer to the presumed "universal" pattern, although substantial cultural variation persisted. Our findings indicate that perceptions of emotion are not universal, but depend on cultural and conceptual contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
... The IRI has been adapted so that the patientʼs spouse was asked to indicate on a 5-point scale how well each of the statements described her husbandʼs behavior both currently and before the onset of the brain injury. Like other authors (see, e.g., Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Lough et al., 2006), we used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test to compare pre-versus postmorbid scores. ...
Background / Purpose:
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the temporal poles (TPs) are part of the neural network activated when participants reason about other people’s mental states, irrespective of the nature (verbal or non-verbal) of the reasoning context and whatever the type of mental state inferred. However, there is so far no clear neuropsychological evidence that the TPs are necessary to reason about other people’s mental states, especially in non-verbal contexts.This hypothesis was tested here through a formal investigation of the theory of mind skills of a brain-damaged patient, C.M., diagnosed with semantic dementia, and suffering from extensive atrophy affecting mainly the left TP.
Main conclusion:
Despite its usual activation in neuroimaging studies, the left temporal pole is not necessary to solve theory of mind problems in non-verbal contexts.
... The results provide evidence that language about faces may be disruptive to systems associated with the perception of visually presented faces. Furthermore, Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti & Miniussi (2009) found that people with semantic deficits have difficulties in emotion perception. Subsequently, the findings of Gendron, Lindquist, Barsalou & Barrett (2012) concur with the previously described. ...
This dissertation investigates the effects of language modality on conceptual categorization. It is hypothesized that spoken and signed languages have an influence on the processing and structure of conceptual categories. Two aspects of language modality in which spoken and signed languages show major differences are Simultaneity and Iconicity. Compared to the audio-vocal modality of spoken languages, the visual-gestural modality of signed languages is well suited for simultaneously producing a large amount of information and moreover, shows a much greater disposition for iconic signs. The simultaneous articulation in signed languages is only possible for concepts which are syntagmatically related (noun related to an attribute, action etc.) and the so-called polycomponential signs are iconic. Paradigmatically related concepts (noun related to a superordinate, coordinate, subordinate etc.) are expressed in a linear sequence as in spoken languages and can be, but are not necessarily, iconic. Because of this difference between the languages in two modalities they are particularly interesting for the study of the underlying semantic concepts. At the focus of this thesis are especially the questions whether simultaneity and iconicity lead to differences in discourse and communication and as a consequence to different semantic relations between concepts. It is hypothesized that the preference for simultaneous structures in the visual-gestural modality lead to stronger relations between syntagmatically related concepts compared to paradigmatically related ones in the visual-gestural modality. Thus, the general objective of this thesis is to investigate the issue of ‘Modality Relativity’ in terms of the old controversy of ‘Linguistic Relativity’, i.e. whether language can affect thought. A series of experiments will be reported testing whether the two aspects of simultaneity and iconicity affect the semantic relations of concepts in any significant ways and thus, have an influence on the formation of conceptual knowledge.
The first part of the thesis addresses the theoretical background. An overview of static and dynamic theories of concepts and categorization is given. The issue of the organization of concepts in the general cognitive system and the question whether concepts are acquired or innate is discussed. In the following the influence of language on perceptual and conceptual categorization will be examined. The Whorfian Linguistic Relativity Principle will be outlined and the basic arguments will be presented for discursive clarity. Subsequently, objections against Whorf’s ideas will be addressed and discussed in some detail. In the next paragraph the focus is on experimental studies about Linguistic Relativity within spoken language cultures and how new evidence changed the theoretical climate and discussion about Linguistic Relativity. The issue of Language Modality, i.e. the condition in which linguistic signs are produced and perceived, will be introduced. Commonalities and differences between German Sign Language (GSL) and German Spoken Language (GSpL) and some non-linguistic studies, which reveal some evidence for an impact of language modality on cognition, are discussed. Finally, in the fourth paragraph, the influence of simultaneity and iconicity of signed languages on conceptual and perceptual categorization is examined. The theoretical part of the thesis ends with the formulation of research questions relating to iconicity and simultaneity.
In the empirical part of the thesis, several experiments will be presented, with the aim of contributing and broadening the present research on linguistic relativity. The experiments focus on cross-linguistic differences between German Sign Language (GSL) users, German Spoken Language (GSpL) users and cross-modal bilinguals (GSL and GSpL). Different language comprehension tasks, i.e. verification task, triad-comparison-task and memory-recognition task, are utilized, in order to study the influence of language modality on conceptual structures. Reaction times and Number of Choices, both in linguistic and non-linguistic tasks, will be used as dependent variables. The studies combine a comparison of structural diversities between sign language and spoken language related to language-modality with a demonstration of highly distinctive patterns of concept structure.
Based on the results of the empirical studies, the last chapter finally will summarize and discuss the influence of simultaneity and iconicity on conceptualization processes. It will be argued that the studies do provide some evidence for the hypothesis that the modality of the language one uses might qualitatively alter the structure of concepts. The empirical research presented in this thesis aims at expanding the scope of inquiry and discussion on the linguistic relativity proposal by including the aspect of language modality.
... As seen in subjects with frontal lobe damage due to other etiologies, FTD patients typically present with emotional processing impairment [6][7][8]. All three subtypes of FTD, when compared to age-matched healthy controls, show significant impairment in emotion detection in faces [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], with the most errors observed in response to negative emotional stimuli [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. However, the basis of behavioral and physiological impairment in FTD is still poorly understood. ...
Previous studies have reported significant deficits in emotion recognition among individuals along the frontotemporal dementia (FTD) spectrum. The basis of emotional impairment is still poorly understood and explicit (emotion appraisal) and implicit (autonomic system activity) responses have not been carefully evaluated.
We investigated explicit evaluation of emotions by testing valence and arousal using self-report measures and we also assessed automatic responses to emotional cues, using autonomic measures (skin conductance response and heart rate).
16 behavioral variant FTD and 12 agrammatic variants of primary progressive aphasia patients were included. The performance of these patients was compared to a group of 14 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 20 healthy controls. Each subject was required to observe and evaluate affective pictures while autonomic parameters were recorded.
FTD patients preserved a functional general competency in terms of valence (correct positive versus negative attribution) and arousal (correct dichotomy between high versus low arousal category) distinction. These patients showed significant changes in autonomic implicit response compared to the other groups. The mismatch between explicit and implicit responsiveness to emotional cues was found both in behavioral variant FTD and in agrammatic variants of primary progressive aphasia. Emotional responsiveness was related to the severity of behavioral abnormalities as measured by the Frontal Behavioral Inventory and associated with atrophy of the left putamen.
The present findings indicate that FTD patients are able to explicitly "appraise" the emotion, but they cannot implicitly "feel" the emotion. This mismatch between the two levels may help explain the general emotional behavior impairment found in these patients.
... Emotion comprehension impairments in SD have been shown to correlate with right-sided atrophy of the amygdala and orbitofrontal regions (e.g., Rosen et al., 2002). Carers of patients with SD also report consistent blunting of emotions and loss of empathy (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Rankin, Kramer, & Miller, 2005;Seeley et al., 2005). ...
... In a large-scale VBM study on neurodegenerative disorders [146], a similar neuroanatomical association with PT scores was found in the subgroup of patients affected by semantic dementia (SD). The correlation that we found between scores in PT and verbal comprehension deficits was also previously documented in a group of SD patients [147,148]. These combined results suggest that reduced cognitive empathy may be associated with deficits in semantic memory and linguistic comprehension, rather than empathic mechanisms of simulation [149]. ...
... Thirdly, as regards AD, it could be interesting to investigate ToM abilities in the prodromal clinical phases, as it could be considered the clinical picture of amnestic mild cognitive impairment ( Wilson et al., 2011). Finally, cognitive and affective processes somehow related to ToM, such as empathy, moral judgement, lie detection, and sarcasm understanding, have been preliminarily investigated in neurodegenerative diseases ( Calabria et al., 2009;Kipps et al., 2009;Kosmidis et al., 2008;Mendez et al., 2005;Rankin et al., 2005;Shany-Ur et al., in press), and further studies are needed to understand how these processes are impaired and which role is played by the dysfunctional ToM abilities. Despite such limitations, the findings presented here provide evidence of compromised ToM abilities in neurodegenerative diseases and strongly support the opportunity to introduce validated ToM tasks in the neuropsychological assessment of such diseases. ...
... Since the 1980s, Davis (1980Davis ( , 1983Davis ( , 1994 Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) has been the predominant instrument used to measure dispositional empathy, with several studies demonstrating its reliability and validity in a variety of contexts (other than hospitality) and in a variety of cultural settings (Albiero, Matricardi, Speltri, & Toso, 2009;Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Fontenelle et al., 2009;Yang, Decety, Lee, Chen, & Cheng, 2009). The strength of this instrument lies in the fact that unlike earlier measures of empathy that focussed on only either the cognitive or emotional component in isolation, the IRI simultaneously measures both cognitive and emotional dimensions. ...
In today’s economy, tourists not only expect professional services but also seek positive emotional experiences when consuming tourism and leisure services. Thus, in recent years increasing attention has been paid to the role of empathy in the delivery of quality hospitality services; yet scant attention has been paid to actually measuring levels of empathy within employees. To meet this objective, using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, employees’ predisposition to engage in empathic relations in delivery of their services were measured, using Iran as an emerging international tourism destination in the world. Results were vastly different from patterns in available normative empathy values.
... The figure's arrows depict the direction of functional connectivity between the hippocampi and the cortical areas implicated in emotional feeling, social cognition, and self-related processing. especially compassion, as reported by their families [Calabria et al., 2009; Fernandez-Duque et al., 2010; Wittenberg et al., 2008] . In these patients, the degradation of hippocampal and medial temporal structures [Dickerson and Sperling, 2008] may preclude sufficient access to personal social memories in real-time processing and thereby interfere with emotion processing. ...
Inducing and experiencing emotions about others' mental and physical circumstances is thought to involve self-relevant processing and personal memories of similar experiences. The hippocampus is important for self-referential processing during recall and prospection; however, its contributions during social emotions have not been systematically investigated. We use event-related averaging and Granger causal connectivity mapping to investigate hippocampal contributions during the processing of varieties of admiration and compassion pertaining to protagonists' mental versus physical circumstances [admiration for virtue (AV) versus for skill; compassion for social/psychological pain (CSP) versus for physical pain]. Data were collected using a multistep emotion-induction paradigm that included psychosocial interviews, BOLD fMRI, and simultaneous psychophysiological recording. Given that mnemonic demands were equivalent among conditions, we tested whether: (1) the hippocampi would be recruited more strongly and for a longer duration during the processing of AV and CSP; and (2) connectivity between the hippocampi and cortical systems involved in visceral somatosensation/emotional feeling, social cognitive, and self-related processing would be more extensive during AV and CSP. Results elucidate the hippocampus' facilitative role in inducing and sustaining appropriate emotional reactions, the importance of self-related processing during social emotions, and corroborate the conception that varieties of emotional processing pertaining to others' mental and physical situations engage at least partially distinct neural mechanisms. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
... Oltre i limiti dell'idea di localizzazione evidenziati da Galloni e Morabito in questo volume, la modularizzazione funzionale è assunta -nella filosofia delle neuroscienze e sempre più anche nella psicologia evoluzionistica -come radicalmente distinta da quella discreta dell'anatomia, ossia come costanza topologica di una interazione dinamica che può aver luogo tra aree anatomicamente distanti che tuttavia funzionano come un'unità 73 . Tuttavia, anche 69 Cfr. ...
... Emotion recognition may also play an important modulating role in this context, as studies suggest that verbosity in older age may, in part, reflect an inability to decode emotional cues of the listener [68]. Changes in emotion processing and empathy are increasingly recognised in SD and have been shown to impact negatively on the quality of the patient-carer relationship [11,19,20,69]. It remains unclear how emotion processing difficulties relate to social communication changes in SD. ...
Mounting evidence suggests that, in parallel with well-defined changes in language, primary progressive aphasia (PPA) syndromes display co-occurring social cognitive impairments. Here, we explored multidimensional profiles of carer-rated social communication using the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire (LCQ) in 11 semantic dementia (SD), 12 logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA) and 9 progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) cases and contrasted their performance with 19 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cases, 26 behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) cases and 31 healthy older controls. Relative to the controls, the majority of patient groups displayed significant overall social communication difficulties, with common and unique profiles of impairment evident on the LCQ subscales. Correlation analyses revealed a differential impact of social communication disturbances on functional outcomes in patient and carer well-being, most pronounced for SD and bvFTD. Finally, voxel-based morphometry analyses based on a structural brain MRI pointed to the degradation of a distributed brain network in mediating social communication dysfunction in dementia. Our findings suggest that social communication difficulties are an important feature of PPA, with significant implications for patient function and carer well-being. The origins of these changes are likely to be multifactorial, reflecting the breakdown of fronto-thalamic brain circuits specialised in the integration of complex information.
... These are emotive and social capacities that have not been studied in PwD, especially with moderate and advanced dementia (MoCA scores as low as 4). In fact, there is still a paucity of research on emotional and social intelligence in PwD, and how it can be used to improve interactions with caregivers (Calabria et al., 2009). The current study suggests that the use of a serious game designed with the unique needs of a PwD in mind can facilitate expression of emotions and thus open doors for communication for PwD and their caregivers. ...
... These are emotive and social capacities that have not been studied in PwD, especially with moderate and advanced dementia (MoCA scores as low as 4). In fact, there is still a paucity of research on emotional and social intelligence in PwD, and how it can be used to improve interactions with caregivers (Calabria et al., 2009). The current study suggests that the use of a serious game designed with the unique needs of a PwD in mind can facilitate expression of emotions and thus open doors for communication for PwD and their caregivers. ...
Context: Dementia is one of the top five chronic diseases, which has an overwhelming impact on patients' life quality, family, and caregivers. Currently, research relating to people with dementia (PwD) focuses on the deterioration of cognitive abilities. A more innovative approach, and the one taken by this paper, is focusing on methods to maintain and improve functionality, communication and quality of life of PwD by building on remaining capacities in the yet unexplored domain of emotional and social intelligence (ESI). The use of serious games for PwD (SG4D) aimed at building social and emotional capacity is a budding field of research.
Objectives: Proof of concept that the, low cost, easy to deploy SG4D, called “My Brain Works” (MBW), co-designed with PwD, enhances ESI, based on the Bar-On ESI model.
Methods: 27 PwD, clients at MELABEV dementia day center, participated in a mixed methods 12 weeks pilot, proof of concept study using a tablet SG4D co-designed with PwD. Quantitative performance data was collected automatically by the tablet during game sessions. In this paper we focus on the analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data related to ESI, observed by 10 different researchers, during each game session.
Results: Quantitative data revealed: both the PwD with high and low MoCA scores had similar average ESI scores. Qualitative analysis revealed that the PwD demonstrated 9 sub-components of the Bar-On ESI Model.
Conclusion: While there is no drug to stop cognitive decline associated with dementia, interventions related to ESI, on the other hand, may improve functioning and quality of life. Despite declines in cognitive abilities, our study shows that a tablet based SG4D can stimulate their ESI and evoke responses in self-awareness, empathy, social and communication capacities. Using SG4D to exercise and maintain social skills is an area that may be promising in the future and may help counter the negative effects of social isolation and loneliness. Such games, while not focusing on cognitive improvement, may also impact on cognitive functioning and help bridge the gap between caregiver and PwD. More research is needed with larger sample sizes.
... Frontotemporal dementia appears to be uniquely characterized by changes in social behavior and capacity for social interactions. People with the behavioral-variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) show a gradual loss of empathy (e.g., Baez et al., 2016;Dermody et al., 2016;Eslinger et al., 2011;Oliver et al., 2015), changes in emotional behavior (e.g., Bozeat et al., 2000;Carr et al., 2018;Hua et al., 2018) and deficits in recognizing facial emotional expressions (e.g., Calabria et al., 2009;Kumfor & Piguet, 2012). In particular, bvFTD patients show pervasive deficits in mentalizing skills including theory of mind (Adenzato et al., 2010) and perspective taking (Dermody et al., 2016), associated with atrophy in core regions of the mentalizing network, as well as other fronto-insular regions implicated in executive functions and emotion recognition (Baez et al., 2016). ...
Changes in social behavior are recognized as potential symptoms of behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and semantic dementia (SD), yet objective ways to assess these behaviors in natural social situations are lacking. This study takes a truly social (or second-person) approach and examines changes in real-world social behavior in different dementia syndromes, by analyzing non-scripted social interactions in bvFTD patients (n = 20) and SD patients (n = 20), compared to patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 20). Video recordings of 10-min conversations between patients and behavioral neurologists were analyzed for the presence of socially engaging (e.g., nodding, smiling, gesturing) and disengaging behavior (e.g., avoiding eye contact, self-grooming, interrupting). Results demonstrated disease-specific profiles, with bvFTD patients showing less nodding and more looking away than AD, and SD patients showing more gesturing than AD. A principal components analysis revealed the presence of four unobserved components, showing atypical disengaging patterns of behavior. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed distinct neurobiological bases for each of these components, with the brain regions identified previously associated with behavior selection, abstract mentalization and processing of multi-sensory and socially-relevant information, in mediating socially engaging and disengaging behavior. This study demonstrates the utility of systematic behavioral observation of social interactions in the differential diagnosis of dementia.
... A unique model for investigating the semantic contribution to FER and valence processing is provided by the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), also known as semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative disease lying on the continuum of frontotemporal degeneration that is characterized by early and severe semantic memory impairments (Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011). Over the past 20 years, a major FER impairment for basic emotions, mostly those with a negative valence, in both static (photographs) and dynamic (videos) presentations have been revealed in svPPA (Perry et al., 2001;Rosen et al., 2002Rosen et al., , 2004Calabria et al., 2009;Kumfor et al., 2011;Miller et al., 2012;Irish et al., 2013;Lindquist et al., 2014;Multani et al., 2017). So far, recognition of self-conscious emotions (e.g. ...
The most recent theories of emotions have postulated that their expression and recognition depend on acquired conceptual knowledge. In other words, the conceptual knowledge derived from prior experiences guide our ability to make sense of such emotions. However, clear evidences are still lacking to contradict more traditional theories, considering emotions as innate and universal physiological states. In addition, whether valence processing (i.e., recognition of the pleasant/unpleasant character of emotions) also relies on semantic knowledge is yet to determine. To investigate the contribution of semantic knowledge to facial emotion recognition and valence processing, we conducted a behavioural and neuroimaging study in 20 controls and 16 patients with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia, a neurodegenerative disease that is prototypical of semantic memory impairment, and in which an emotion recognition deficit has already been described. We assessed participants’ knowledge of emotion concepts and recognition of 10 basic (e.g. anger) or self-conscious (e.g. embarrassment) facial emotional expressions presented both statically (i.e. images) and dynamically (i.e. videos). All participants also underwent a brain MRI. Group comparisons revealed deficits in both emotion concept knowledge and emotion recognition in patients, independently of type of emotion and presentation. These measures were significantly correlated with each other in patients and with semantic fluency in patients and controls. Neuroimaging analyses showed that both emotion recognition and emotion conceptual knowledge were correlated with reduced grey-matter density in similar areas within frontal ventral, temporal, insular and striatal regions, together with white-fibre degeneration in tracts connecting frontal regions with each other as well as with temporal regions. We then performed a qualitative analysis of responses made during the facial emotion recognition task, by delineating valence errors (when one emotion was mistaken for another of a different valence), from other errors made during the emotion recognition test. We found that patients made more valence errors. The number of valence errors correlated with emotion conceptual knowledge as well as with reduced grey-matter volume in brain regions already retrieved to correlate with this score. Specificity analyses allowed us to conclude that this cognitive relationship and anatomical overlap were not mediated by a general effect of disease severity. Our findings suggest that semantic knowledge guides the recognition of emotions and is also involved in valence processing. Our study supports a constructionist view of emotion recognition and valence processing, and could help to refine current theories on the interweaving of semantic knowledge and emotion processing.
... Lexical decision accuracy in svPPA patients may be particularly impaired on colorrelated words and words referring to face movements and speech acts, while function words, number words, and prepositions may be partially preserved (Pulvermüller et al., 2010;Shebani et al., 2017). Another dissociation between explicit and implicit emotional functioning has been documented in a case report (Calabria et al., 2009). These reports suggest a certain clinical variability in some cases. ...
Semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) is a rare neurodegenerative disease characterized by a progressive loss of semantic knowledge. Patients with svPPA show anomia, impaired word comprehension, poor object recognition, and difficulties in retrieving semantic information. svPPA is also a unique “natural” model that allows clinicians and cognitive neuroscientists to study the organization of semantic memory because only semantic knowledge is affected in the initial period of the disease, with relative sparing of other cognitive domains. In the clinical practice, semantic memory is commonly tested only with verbal tests. The aim of the present study was to preliminary test a new Multimodal Semantic Battery developed in our laboratory, which comprised 11 subtests designed to assess the semantic knowledge of multiple items via all input modalities. The battery was administered twice, over four years, to a patient diagnosed with svPPA. We found that when extensively tested with multiple tests, in some cases, he was still able to recall semantic features of the items that otherwise would not have emerged with standard semantic tests. These results are discussed for the clinical practice: monitoring semantic memory through all modalities in a practical and reliable way could be useful for both clinicians and experimental researchers to better investigate the breakdown of semantic knowledge.
... Werner et al., 2007). Studies examining language variants separately using caregiver report measures have yielded mixed results, with some studies suggesting impairment in svPPA or nfvPPA (Rosen et al., 2002Rankin et al., 2005;Calabria et al., 2009;Hazelton et al., 2017) and others suggesting a lack of impairment (Eslinger et al., 2011;Russell et al., 2017). Only one study to our knowledge directly compared patients with svPPA, nfvPPA and bvFTD using a task-based measure of emotion perception; findings indicated that all FTD groups displayed impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions (Kumfor et al., 2011). ...
Deficits in emotion perception (the ability to infer others' emotions accurately) can occur as a result of neurodegeneration. It remains unclear how different neurodegenerative diseases affect different forms of emotion perception. The present study compares performance on a dynamic tracking task of emotion perception (where participants track the changing valence of a film character's emotions) with performance on an emotion category labeling task (where participants label specific emotions portrayed by film characters) across seven diagnostic groups (N = 178) including: Alzheimer's disease (AD), behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal syndrome (CBS), and healthy controls. Consistent with hypotheses, compared to controls, the bvFTD group was impaired on both tasks. The svPPA group was impaired on the emotion labeling task, whereas the nfvPPA, PSP, and AD groups were impaired on the dynamic tracking task. Smaller volumes in bilateral frontal and left insular regions were associated with worse labeling, whereas smaller volumes in bilateral medial frontal, temporal, and right insular regions were associated with worse tracking. Findings suggest labeling and tracking facets of emotion perception are differentially affected across neurodegenerative diseases due to their unique neuroanatomical correlates.
... The importance of the dmPFC is further highlighted by a recent study by Bowman et al. (2019) which showed that this region is activated even in children as young as 4 years when performing first-order ToM tasks of various paradigms. Furthermore, multiple medial and posterior regions are involved such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which is, inter alia, associated with processing emotional aspects of self-reflection (see e.g., van der Meer et al., 2010), the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) which is associated with processing self-mental states (see e.g., Lou et al., 2004), as well as the temporal pole (TP) seemingly activated in both cognitive and affective ToM (see e.g., Calabria et al., 2009;Lambon Ralph et al., 2009). Further regions are the precuneus which is associated with visuospatial imagery, episodic memory retrieval, and self-processing operations (Cavanna and Trimble, 2006); the cuneus which usually shows higher activity in cognitive ToM (Schlaffke et al., 2015); the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), not only associated with ToM processing but also with episodic memory, attention, and language processing (Igelström et al., 2015); as well as the superior temporal sulcus (STS), associated with the detection of social cues including prosody, faces, trustworthiness, and intention (Winston et al., 2002;Ethofer et al., 2006;Sabatinelli et al., 2011). ...
Attributing mental states to others in social interactions [Theory of Mind (ToM)] often depends on visual social cues like eye gaze or mimic. This study presents an event-related potentials task (Brainy-ERP) that was developed in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of first-, second-, and third-order cognitive and affective ToM processing. The task was based on social visual cues and involved electroencephalographic event-related potential (ERP) analyses and exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography analyses (eLORETA) source localization analyses. Results showed that in cognitive and affective conditions, first-order trials elicited greater Anterior P2 (180–370 ms) amplitudes. In the cognitive condition, third-order trials elicited greatest amplitudes in the broadly distributed early negative slow wave (eNSW, 260–470 ms) and the late NSW (LNSW, 460–1,000 ms). In the affective condition, third-order and second-order trials elicited greatest amplitudes in a broadly distributed NSW (250–1,000 ms). Regarding affective trials in the NSW time span, statistical significant differences and trends were shown regarding activation of underlying brain regions. Third-order trials elicited greatest activation in a number of regions typically associated with the ToM network, especially the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), cuneus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Furthermore, ToM low performers (participants with high accuracy but longer reaction times) showed by trend smaller Posterior N1 and significantly smaller eNSW amplitudes compared to average and high performers. This study offers new insights into electrophysiological correlates of basic and higher order cognitive and affective ToM processing and its precise time course.
... Therefore, svPPA represents a reliable clinical model of semantic memory impairment and allows the testing of the assumptions driven from theoretical models of word and emotion recognition. Most studies conducted in this population have documented deficits in the recognition of basic emotions conveyed by facial expressions (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Hsieh, Hornberger, Piguet, & Hodges, 2012;Kumfor et al., 2011;Lindquist, Gendron, Barrett, & Dickerson, 2014;Macoir, Hudon, Tremblay, Laforce, & Wilson, 2019;Miller et al., 2012;Perry et al., 2001;Rosen et al., 2004Rosen et al., , 2002, by musical excerpts Macoir, Berubé-Lalancette, et al., 2016;Omar, Hailstone, Warren, Crutch, & Warren, 2010;Omar et al., 2011) and by prosody (Macoir et al. 2019;Perry et al., 2001;Rankin et al., 2009). However, the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying such deficits remain unclear. ...
The main goal of this study was to examine the role of semantic memory in the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words. Eight participants presenting with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and 33 healthy control participants were administered three tasks designed to investigate the formal association between the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words and the lexical and semantic processing of these words. Results revealed that individuals with svPPA showed deficits in the recognition of negative emotional valence conveyed by words. Moreover, results evidenced that their performance in the recognition of emotional valence was better for correctly than for incorrectly retrieved lexical entries of words, while their performance was comparable for words that were correctly or incorrectly associated with semantic concepts. These results suggest that the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words relies on the retrieval of lexical, but not semantic, representations of words. ARTICLE HISTORY
... More studies have been conducted on the recognition of basic emotions in svPPA. A few of them have documented deficits in the recognition of basic emotions conveyed by facial expressions (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Hsieh et al., 2012;Kumfor et al., 2011;Lindquist et al., 2014;Miller et al., 2012;Perry et al., 2001;Rosen et al., 2004Rosen et al., , 2002. As a whole, these studies revealed significant impairment in facial emotion recognition, especially for negative emotions. ...
There is compelling evidence that semantic memory is involved in emotion recognition. However, its contribution to the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions remains unclear. We compared the performance of 10 participants with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), a clinical model of semantic memory impairment, to that of 33 healthy participants using three experimental tasks assessing the recognition of: 1) emotional valence conveyed by photographic scenes, 2) basic emotions conveyed by facial expressions, and 3) basic emotions conveyed by prosody sounds. Individuals with svPPA showed significant deficits in the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions (except happiness and surprise conveyed by facial expressions). However, the performance of the two groups was comparable when the performance on tests assessing semantic memory was added as a covariate in the analyses. Altogether, these results suggest that semantic memory contributes to the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions. By examining the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions in individuals with selective semantic memory loss, our results contribute to the refinement of current theories on the role of semantic memory in emotion recognition.
... Además, se menciona que la variante conductual de dicho padecimiento se caracteriza por cambios progresivos en la personalidad e interacción social, precediendo normalmente a otros déficits cognitivos 24 . Un estudio sobre demencia semántica (una variante de la demencia fronto-temporal), demostró que existen alteraciones en dominios como empatía y procesamiento de emociones en pacientes diagnosticados con dicha enfermedad 25 . La demencia, es una enfermedad con frecuencia estudiada en el área de las neurociencias por el deterioro que produce en el sistema nervioso. ...
Social neuroscience research has focused on the processes of perception and understanding of self, in the process of emotional self-regulation, action, and in the processes that occur at the interface between one and the others. This area of research seeks holistic explanations to try to show the contribution of neural, cognitive and emotional aspects of behavior. Much of its research has been directed to the study of patients with some kind of brain injury or approaching cognitive processes such as memory, perception and language, but investigation work on chronical diseases has been scarce. The study of psychiatric disorders, broadly recurrent in the research of psychology, has been also an object of study in social neuroscience. On the other hand, according to the World Health Organization, noncommunicable diseases or chronics have been defined as diseases of long term and slow progression. The study of noncommunicable diseases has required permanently intervention of disciplines apart from medicine to be better understood. This paper will show a review about the contributions of social neuroscience in noncommunicable diseases. As an area of emergin research, social neuroscience needs to carry out research about diseases that impact directly on health population. This investigation will allow a better understanding of the deterioration caused by noncommunicable diseases, and it will expand the field of intervention of the social neuroscience.
... Emotion word comprehension was tested in a single case study of facial emotion recognition in SD. In this instance, the patient was able to match one target emotion word to one everyday situation (e.g., "How would you feel if you smell dog poo?"; Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009). However, only a small number of emotion words (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, surprise, and sadness) were investigated in this instance. ...
Word comprehension deficits in neurodegenerative conditions are most striking in the syndrome of semantic dementia. Tests of word comprehension typically examine concrete and abstract nonemotion words. Whether or not understanding of words describing emotion concepts (e.g., insulted, fascinated) is also impaired in the dementias has not been systematically investigated.
Patients with semantic dementia (SD; n = 8), behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 8), Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 12), as well as healthy controls (n = 15) completed newly designed emotion word comprehension tasks. Participants also undertook the Graded Synonyms Test, an abstract and concrete nonemotion word comprehension measure.
Degradation of knowledge about negative and positive emotion words was most impaired in SD. Correlation analyses in the SD group also showed that knowledge of emotion words correlated with the understanding of abstract nonemotion words. The bvFTD group was impaired only when making associations for emotion words. The AD cohort did not differ from controls on any measures of word comprehension.
Impairment in word knowledge is greatest in the syndrome of SD, compared with bvFTD and AD, and includes concrete words, abstract words as well as emotion words. Importantly, word comprehension deficits affect positive and negative emotions.
... Emotion comprehension impairments in SD have been shown to correlate with right-sided atrophy of the amygdala and orbitofrontal regions (e.g., Rosen et al., 2002). Carers of patients with SD also report consistent blunting of emotions and loss of empathy (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009;Rankin, Kramer, & Miller, 2005;Seeley et al., 2005). ...
The recognition of facial expressions of emotion is impaired in semantic dementia (SD) and is associated with right-sided brain atrophy in areas known to be involved in emotion processing, notably the amygdala. Whether patients with SD also experience difficulty recognizing emotions conveyed by other media, such as music, is unclear. Prior studies have used excerpts of known music from classical or film repertoire but not unfamiliar melodies designed to convey distinct emotions. Patients with SD (n ¼ 11), Alzheimer's disease (n ¼ 12) and healthy control participants (n ¼ 20) underwent tests of emotion recognition in two modalities: unfamiliar musical tunes and unknown faces as well as volumetric MRI. Patients with SD were most impaired with the recognition of facial and musical emotions, particularly for negative emotions. Voxel-based morphometry showed that the labelling of emotions, regardless of modality, correlated with the degree of atrophy in the right temporal pole, amygdala and insula. The recognition of musical (but not facial) emotions was also associated with atrophy of the left anterior and inferior temporal lobe, which overlapped with regions correlating with standardized measures of verbal semantic memory. These findings highlight the common neural substrates supporting the processing of emotions by facial and musical stimuli but also indicate that the recognition of emotions from music draws upon brain regions that are associated with semantics in language.
... Oltre i limiti dell'idea di localizzazione evidenziati da Galloni e Morabito in questo volume, la modularizzazione funzionale è assunta -nella filosofia delle neuroscienze e sempre più anche nella psicologia evoluzionistica -come radicalmente distinta da quella discreta dell'anatomia, ossia come costanza topologica di una interazione dinamica che può aver luogo tra aree anatomicamente distanti che tuttavia funzionano come un'unità 73 . Tuttavia, anche 69 Cfr. ...
In this paper, an edge-fed quarter-wave matched circularly polarized microstrip antenna with a circular truncated patch and 2-by-1 T-junction planar array configuration are studied using finite element method (FEM) based simulator. The aim of the work is to investigate the microstrip antennas feasibility in capturing energy from ambient EM radiation and converting it into direct electric power. The results obtained demonstrate an acceptable agreement between the simulated and measured results.
The aim of the present study was to compare the performance of older and younger adults on an emotional priming task. Moreover, a nonemotional priming paradigm was used as a control task to disentangle age-related changes due to emotional processing difficulties from modifications due to a decline of executive inhibitory control abilities. Twenty-two young and 22 older healthy participants completed an emotional priming task and a nonemotional priming task. In the older adult group, reaction times in the emotional priming paradigm were not influenced by any of the prime conditions, whereas both groups exhibited similar facilitation effects induced by the congruent prime in the nonemotional task. The selective lack of an emotional priming effect in older adults shown in this preliminary report suggests that aging-induced changes in the ability to recognize emotions implicitly are directly dependent on emotional processing difficulties and not due to a general age-related modification of cognitive processes.
IntroductionThe descriptions of apraxia in frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD) are often isolated and contradictory (Blass & Rabins, 2009; Donoso & Salinas, 2009). Have not yet been reported correlations between apraxia and severity of dementia in fvFTD.
Processing of emotions in neurodegenerative disorders: a review of the literature
Cognitive and emotional disorders are associated with degenerative disorders. Such deficits have important repercussions in patients’ and caregivers’ daily life. Several studies have focused on emotional processing in these pathologies. Patients have difficulties to recognize and identify emotions and they also show impaired performance in tasks of emotional discrimination or emotional matching, whatever which sensory modality is used (visual or auditory). However, these deficits are not homogeneous in all dementias, and they could affect one or more emotions. The degree of emotional impairment may also vary from one pathology to another. These deficits in emotional processing are in the relationship with the impairment of brain regions observed in the neurodegenerative diseases involving amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia. In normal aging, several studies showed the presence of subtle difficulties for emotional processing. Elderly subjects showed alterations to identify some negative emotions (sadness, anger and fear) and these perturbations could explain by the neuroanatomical changes in regions associated with negative emotions. However, there would be little impact of these difficulties in elderly subjects’ daily life. In this article, we present a review of the literature of behavioral studies conducted on emotional processing in Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. We also present the main cognitive models, and discuss the neural networks involved in emotional processing.
The ability to recognise the emotional states of others is believed to facilitate the detection of deception, but the exact way in which individuals use emotional information during deception detection has not been fully explored. In this paper, the current way of thinking about deception detection is reviewed and extended by a discussion about the importance of the stakes to the liar in emotion cue production. For the perception of emotion cues, individual differences in empathic ability are proposed to be a crucial moderator of the relationship between emotion recognition and deception detection. This ability may facilitate deception detection under certain circumstances but may hinder accuracy in others. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the way emotions relate to both the process of deception and its detection, and propose possible future avenues of research in this area.
La investigación en neurociencia social se ha enfocado en procesos de percepción y comprensión del self, de autorregulación emocional, acción, y los que ocurren en la interfaz entre uno y otros. Esta área de investigación busca explicaciones integrales para tratar de mostrar la contribución de aspectos neuronales, cognitivos y emocionales de la conducta. Gran parte de sus investigaciones han estado orientadas al estudio de pacientes con algún tipo de lesión cerebral o abordando procesos cognitivos como memoria, percepción y lenguaje, pero el trabajo en enfermedades crónicas ha sido escaso. El abordaje de trastornos psiquiátricos, recurrente en términos generales en los trabajos de psicología, ha sido también objeto de estudio en la neurociencia social; por otra parte, de acuerdo a la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), las enfermedades no transmisibles o crónicas se definen como padecimientos de larga duración y progresión lenta. El estudio de las enfermedades no transmisibles ha requerido de la intervención permanente de disciplinas distintas a la medicina. En este trabajo se hará una revisión sobre las aportaciones de la neurociencia social en enfermedades no transmisibles. Siendo un área de investigación emergente, la neurociencia social necesita llevar a cabo trabajos acerca de padecimientos que impactan en la salud de una población. Lo anterior permitirá una mayor comprensión sobre el deterioro producido por las enfermedades no transmisibles, y ampliara el campo de intervención de la neurociencia social.
People believe they see emotion written on the faces of other people. In an instant, simple facial actions are transformed into information about another's emotional state. The present research examined whether a perceiver unknowingly contributes to emotion perception with emotion word knowledge. We present 2 studies that together support a role for emotion concepts in the formation of visual percepts of emotion. As predicted, we found that perceptual priming of emotional faces (e.g., a scowling face) was disrupted when the accessibility of a relevant emotion word (e.g., anger) was temporarily reduced, demonstrating that the exact same face was encoded differently when a word was accessible versus when it was not. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.
Objective:
Social cognition and executive deficits are frequent in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. Yet, there is a paucity of standardized domain-specific psychometric tools for the assessment of complex decision-making, social cognition (i.e., Theory of Mind), and empathy. To this aim, this study intended at providing normative data in an Italian population sample for the Iowa Gambling Task, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index.
Method:
The Iowa Gambling Task, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index were administered to 462 healthy Italian participants aged between 18 and 91 years, considering demographic factors. A confirmatory factor analysis was run to test for unidimensionality. Normative values were derived by means of the Equivalent Scores method.
Results:
Education predicted all tests' scores, age influenced scores at the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, gender predicted empathic abilities only. The three tests did not underpin a unidimensional structure.
Conclusions:
The present work provides demographically adjusted Italian normative data for a set of tests assessing real-life decision-making, emotion recognition and empathy, filling a gap within II-level, domain-specific, neuropsychological testing. For the first time, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index is proposed as an adjuvant neuropsychological tool, while the standardization of the Iowa Gambling Task offers a new scoring system for advantageous/disadvantageous choices.
Presents case reports of a 67-yr-old man and 2 women (aged 60 and 66 yrs) with primary cerebral atrophy in whom progressive breakdown in language and visual perception are attributed to loss of semantic information. This form of dementia is distinct from that of Alzheimer's disease and is assumed to represent a form of circumscribed cerebral atrophy with emphasis of pathology in temporal rather than frontal regions of the brain.
Full Manual of the FEEST including Norms for the Ekman 60 Faces Test and the Emotion Hexagon.
Based on information and norms given in the manual, the Ekman 60 Faces Test and the Emotion Hexagon (the latter uses morphed facial expressions) can easily be set up with the original Ekman & Friesen Faces (POFA) and a set of morphed facial expression using Powerpoint or any experimental presentation software.
We have made the morphed faces available via Paul Ekman's website - www.paulekman.com - and Amos Hausman-Rogers at Paul Ekman Customer Service <custserv@paulekman.com> is now able to deal with requests concerning FEEST.
For the time being, the morphed images are distributed as a free supplement to purchasers of the Ekman and Friesen 'Pictures of Facial Affect' (POFA).
Please note: Italian norms can be found here: Dodich et al. Emotion recognition from facial expressions: a normative study of the Ekman 60-Faces Test in the Italian population.Neurol Sci. 2014 Jul;35(7):1015-21. doi: 10.1007/s10072-014-1631-x.
Presents case reports of a 67-yr-old man and 2 women (aged 60 and 66 yrs) with primary cerebral atrophy in whom progressive breakdown in language and visual perception are attributed to loss of semantic information. This form of dementia is distinct from that of Alzheimer's disease and is assumed to represent a form of circumscribed cerebral atrophy with emphasis of pathology in temporal rather than frontal regions of the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.
Describes the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and its relationships with measures of social functioning, self-esteem, emotionality, and sensitivity to others. 677 male and 667 female undergraduates served as Ss. Each of the 4 IRI subscales displayed a distinctive and predictable pattern of relationships with these measures, as well as with previous unidimensional empathy measures. Findings provide evidence for a multidimensional approach to empathy. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
The ability to carry out movements on imitation was assessed with a 24-item test in uniterally hemisphere-damaged patients. On the basis of a cutoff score derived from the performances of 100 control patients, 20% of the right brain-damaged patients were calssified as apraxic. Most right brain-damaged patients were only mildly defective, but a few showed a striking impairment. In left brain-damaged patients apraxia was not only more frequent, but also much more severe and was nearly always associated with aphasia. However, the correlation between the motor and the language disorder was not particularly high, and the link between the two symptoms was thought to be dependent on the contiguity of the underlying nervous structures.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the second cause of degenerative dementia. Behavioral changes occur before the cognitive decline and remain the major feature. A poor perception of emotion could account for some behavioral symptoms. The aim of this study was to assess the perception of emotion in patients with FTD and to compare it with that of patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). Fifty subjects performed the tests: 20 patients with probable AD, 18 patients with FTD, and 12 matched controls. The two patient groups did not differ in age, sex, severity of dementia, duration of the disease, and language tests. Subjects had to recognize and point out the name of one of seven basic emotions (anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness, surprise, and contempt) on a set of 28 faces presented on slides. The three groups were equally able to distinguish a face displaying affect from one not displaying affect. Naming of emotion was worse in patients with FTD than in patients with AD (correct answers 46% vs. 62%; p = 0.0006) who did not differ significantly from controls (72%). Anger, sadness, and disgust were less recognized in FTD than in AD patients who did not differ from controls, whereas fear and contempt were poorly recognized in both groups of patients compared with controls. These findings argue for different neural substrates underlying the recognition of various basic emotions. Behavioral disorders in FTD may be partly due to an impaired interpretation of the emotional environment.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by behavioural disorders that suggest abnormalities of emotional processing. Patients with the temporal variant of FTD (tvFTD) are particularly at risk for developing deficits in emotional processing secondary to atrophy in the amygdala, anterior temporal cortex (ATC) and orbital frontal cortex (OFC), structures that are components of the brain's emotional processing systems. In addition, previous studies have suggested that predominantly right, as opposed to left temporal atrophy is more likely to be associated with behavioural and emotional impairments in tvFTD. However, emotional processing has never been assessed directly in this group. We examined one aspect of emotional processing, namely the comprehension of facial expressions of emotion (emotional comprehension) in nine individuals with tvFTD, and correlated performance on this measure with atrophy (as measured from T(1)-weighted MRI scans by region of interest analysis) in the amygdala, ATC and OFC. Compared with age-matched controls, the tvFTD group was impaired in emotional comprehension, with more severe impairment for emotions with negative valence, including sadness, anger and fear, than for happiness. Emotional comprehension was correlated with atrophy in the right amygdala and the right OFC, and not with atrophy in other structures. When individual profiles of amygdala atrophy were examined across patients and compared with control values, right amygdala atrophy was always accompanied by left amygdala atrophy, whereas patients with volume loss in the left amygdala could have normal or decreased right amygdala volumes. Thus, emotional comprehension appeared to be most impaired when bilateral amygdala atrophy was present, and was not associated with the degree of left amygdala atrophy. Our data indicate that tvFTD is associated with impairments in emotional processing that may underlie some behavioural problems in this disorder, and that the emergence of such deficits depends on the specific pattern of anatomical injury. These results have implications both for the clinical presentation in tvFTD patients and for the study of the neuroanatomical basis of emotion.
Tests of famous face recognition and naming, and tasks assessing semantic knowledge about famous people after presentation either of their faces or their names are often used in the neuropsychological examination of aphasic, amnesic and demented patients. A total of 187 normal subjects took part in this study. The aim was to collect normative data for a newly devised test including five subtests: famous face naming, fame judgement after face presentation and after name presentation, semantic knowledge about famous people after face presentation and after name presentation. Norms were calculated taking into account demographic variables such as age, sex and education and adjusted scores were used to determine inferential cut-off scores and to compute equivalent scores. Multiple regression analyses showed that age and education influenced significantly the performance on most subtests, but sex had no effect on any of them. Scores of the subtest evaluating fame judgements after name presentation were significantly influenced only by education. The only subtest whose scores were not influenced by any demographic variable was fame judgement after face presentation.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterised by behavioural disorders that suggest abnormalities of emotional processing. In a previous study, we showed that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and with FTD were equally able to distinguish a face displaying affect from one not displaying affect. However, recognition of emotion was worse in patients with FTD than in patients with AD who did not differ significantly from controls. The aim of this study was to follow up the perception of emotions on faces in these patients. The poor perception of emotion could worsen differently in AD and in FTD, with the progression of atrophy of the amygdala, the anterior temporal cortex and the orbital frontal cortex, structures that are components of the brain's emotional processing systems.
Patients with AD or with FTD had to recognise and point out the name of one of seven basic emotions (anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness, surprise and contempt) on a set of 28 faces presented on slides at the first visit and 3 years later.
Thirty-seven patients (AD = 19, FTD = 18) performed the tests initially. The two patient groups did not differ for age, sex and duration of the disease. During the follow-up, 12 patients died, 4 patients refused to perform the tests and 8 could not be tested because of the severity of the disease. Finally, 7 patients with AD and 6 patients with FTD performed the two tests at a mean delay of 40 months. All patients with AD had worse results at follow-up on the perception of emotion despite the prescription of inhibitors of cholinesterase in all patients and of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in 4 patients. As a whole, patients with FTD had better results in the second than in the first assessment (however, 3 of them had worse results) independently of the prescription of trazodone (n = 2), other SSRIs (n = 2), or the absence of treatment (n = 2), and of possible cognitive change.
Recognition of emotion on faces in AD decreases with the progression of dementia and could be related to the progression of the degeneration of the structures implicated in emotional processing systems. Inconsistency of the results in FTD may be related to impulsiveness, lack of consistency of the patients and to heterogeneity of the progression of the lesions.
Neurodegenerative diseases frequently affect brain regions important for emotional processing, offering a valuable opportunity to study the effects of brain injury on emotion. The current study examined the neuroanatomical correlates of impaired recognition of emotions in patients with neurodegenerative disease. Performance on recognition of facial expressions, as measured by the Florida Affect Battery, was correlated with regional changes in gray matter tissue content in 50 patients with neurodegenerative disease using voxel-based morphometry. Recognition accuracy in the group was poor for negative emotions (fear, anger and sadness) and good for happiness, consistent with previous studies. For negative emotions, a region in the right lateral inferior temporal gyrus (Brodman's area (BA) 20) extending into the right middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) was correlated with accuracy. This effect appeared to be strongest for sadness, which was also independently correlated with atrophy in the superior temporal gyrus. These data suggest that regions in the right lateral and inferolateral temporal lobe are important for visual processing of negative emotions from faces and that functioning of this right temporal network is most critical for recognition of sad faces.
This paper surveys the similarities and differences between frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). The review covers findings primarily from neuropsychological studies on memory, language, attention/executive function, and visuospatial abilities. However, neuropsychiatric and neuroimaging data are also briefly discussed. Distinguishing features of both FTD and AD are described in order to present a comprehensive clinical picture of these dementing diseases, which is essential for the process of differential diagnosis. The cause of specific cognitive deficits is also considered. Our comprehensive review of the empirical literature reveals that AD is characterized by early memory loss and visuospatial problems, while among the main features of FTD are behavioral abnormalities and executive dysfunctions.
Social cognitive neuroscience examines social phenomena and processes using cognitive neuroscience research tools such as neuroimaging and neuropsychology. This review examines four broad areas of research within social cognitive neuroscience: (a) understanding others, (b) understanding oneself, (c) controlling oneself, and (d) the processes that occur at the interface of self and others. In addition, this review highlights two core-processing distinctions that can be neurocognitively identified across all of these domains. The distinction between automatic versus controlled processes has long been important to social psychological theory and can be dissociated in the neural regions contributing to social cognition. Alternatively, the differentiation between internally-focused processes that focus on one's own or another's mental interior and externally-focused processes that focus on one's own or another's visible features and actions is a new distinction. This latter distinction emerges from social cognitive neuroscience investigations rather than from existing psychological theories demonstrating that social cognitive neuroscience can both draw on and contribute to social psychological theory.
Empathy is a complex social behaviour mediated by a network of brain structures. Recently, several functional imaging studies have investigated the neural basis of empathy, but few corroborative human lesion studies exist. Severe empathy loss is a common feature of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), and is also seen in other neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, the neuroanatomic basis of empathy was investigated in 123 patients with FTLD, Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). IRI Empathic Concern and Perspective taking scores were correlated with structural MRI brain volume using voxel-based morphometry. Voxels in the right temporal pole, the right fusiform gyrus, the right caudate and right subcallosal gyrus correlated significantly with total empathy score (P < 0.05 after whole-brain correction for multiple comparisons). Empathy score correlated positively with the volume of right temporal structures in semantic dementia, and with subcallosal gyrus volume in frontotemporal dementia. These findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that a primarily right frontotemporal network of brain regions is involved in emotion processing, and highlights the roles of the right temporal pole and inferior frontal/striatal regions in regulating complex social interactions. This is the first large-scale lesion study to investigate the neural basis of empathy using correlational analytic methods. The results suggest that the right anterior temporal and medial frontal regions are essential for real-life empathic behaviour.
We sought to identify the cognitive tests that best discriminate between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). A comprehensive search of all studies examining the cognitive performance of persons diagnosed with AD and FTD, published between 1980 and 2006, was conducted. Ninety-four studies were identified, comprising 2936 AD participants and 1748 FTD participants. Weighted Cohen's d effect sizes, percentage overlap statistics, confidence intervals and fail-safe Ns were calculated for each cognitive test that was used by two or more studies. The most discriminating cognitive tests were measures of orientation, memory, language, visuomotor function and general cognitive ability. Although there were large and significant differences between groups on these measures, there was substantial overlap in the scores of the AD and FTD groups. Age, education, years since diagnosis and diagnostic criteria did not significantly contribute to the group differences. Given the large overlap in the test performance of persons diagnosed with AD and FTD, cognitive tests should be used cautiously and in conjunction with a medical history, behavioural observations, imaging and information from relatives when making differential diagnoses.
Ninety-eight healthy participants were examined with a new test of Famous Name Comprehension which, in the framework of a serial model of person processing, sequentially assessed Name Recognition (i.e., the ability to classify items as familiar or unfamiliar) and Person Identification (i.e., the ability to provide biographical knowledge of recognised items). Names were presented in a written format. A perfectly equivalent face version of the test allowed a comparison of familiarity and identification of people from name and from face input. Furthermore, the effect of the "age" of the items, i.e. the time elapsed from the presumed first exposure to the stimulus to the time of testing, was also investigated. Normative data are provided. Education was the only significant variable for recognition, while education, age and gender turned out to be significant for identification. Recognition was significantly better with name than with face input, while on identification names and faces did not differ significantly. "Oldest" items were both recognised and identified significantly worse than recent ones. The results of face-name comparison are interpreted in terms of the different opportunities to be exposed to names and faces, the relevance of visuoperceptual attributes linked to faces and the evidence of shared knowledge from different inputs. The relative advantage of recent celebrities supports the semantic characterisation of knowledge of famous people.
The aim of this study was to improve the neuropathologic recognition and provide criteria for the pathological diagnosis in the neurodegenerative diseases grouped as frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD); revised criteria are proposed. Recent advances in molecular genetics, biochemistry, and neuropathology of FTLD prompted the Midwest Consortium for Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and experts at other centers to review and revise the existing neuropathologic diagnostic criteria for FTLD. The proposed criteria for FTLD are based on existing criteria, which include the tauopathies [FTLD with Pick bodies, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, sporadic multiple system tauopathy with dementia, argyrophilic grain disease, neurofibrillary tangle dementia, and FTD with microtubule-associated tau (MAPT) gene mutation, also called FTD with parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17)]. The proposed criteria take into account new disease entities and include the novel molecular pathology, TDP-43 proteinopathy, now recognized to be the most frequent histological finding in FTLD. TDP-43 is a major component of the pathologic inclusions of most sporadic and familial cases of FTLD with ubiquitin-positive, tau-negative inclusions (FTLD-U) with or without motor neuron disease (MND). Molecular genetic studies of familial cases of FTLD-U have shown that mutations in the progranulin (PGRN) gene are a major genetic cause of FTLD-U. Mutations in valosin-containing protein (VCP) gene are present in rare familial forms of FTD, and some families with FTD and/or MND have been linked to chromosome 9p, and both are types of FTLD-U. Thus, familial TDP-43 proteinopathy is associated with defects in multiple genes, and molecular genetics is required in these cases to correctly identify the causative gene defect. In addition to genetic heterogeneity amongst the TDP-43 proteinopathies, there is also neuropathologic heterogeneity and there is a close relationship between genotype and FTLD-U subtype. In addition to these recent significant advances in the neuropathology of FTLD-U, novel FTLD entities have been further characterized, including neuronal intermediate filament inclusion disease. The proposed criteria incorporate up-to-date neuropathology of FTLD in the light of recent immunohistochemical, biochemical, and genetic advances. These criteria will be of value to the practicing neuropathologist and provide a foundation for clinical, clinico-pathologic, mechanistic studies and in vivo models of pathogenesis of FTLD.
Semantic dementia (SD), one of the main clinical variants of frontotemporal dementia, presents a unique combination of clinical and imaging abnormalities. We describe the epidemiological, cognitive, and radiological features of SD. The distinctive and consistent neuropsychological deficits in this disorder have had a major effect on current conceptions of the organisation of semantic memory and its links to episodic memory, language, and perceptual processes. Structural (MRI) and functional (fluorodeoxyglucose-PET) studies in SD emphasise the role of the temporopolar and perirhinal cortices. Unlike other frontotemporal dementia syndromes, the neuropathological findings in SD are fairly predictable: most patients have ubiquitin-positive, tau-negative neuronal inclusions.
Social cognition is crucial for human interaction, and is markedly impaired in the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD). The relationship of various aspects of social functioning, however, remains controversial in this group.
Patients with fvFTD (n = 18), and matched controls (n = 13), were tested using tasks designed to assess their Theory of Mind (ToM), moral reasoning, emotion recognition and executive function. Caregivers documented changes in empathy compared to premorbid functioning.
We found marked impairments in the abilities of fvFTD patients, relative to controls, in ability to mentalise (ToM), which was evident on a cartoon test, but not on a story-based ToM task. Knowledge of social rules was intact, but moral reasoning was defective, and was due, in part, to an inability to rate the seriousness of moral and conventional transgressions appropriately. Executive function was impaired in this group, and compromised aspects of moral reasoning, but ToM performance was independent of this. Emotion recognition was globally impaired in fvFTD, but was particularly so for anger and disgust which may partly explain the difficulty these patients have with identifying social violations. Empathy, as rated by carers, was also shown to be abnormal.
It appears that social reasoning is disrupted in a number of ways in fvFTD, and the findings provide a basis for the understanding and further study of abnormal behaviour in this disease. The results are discussed in light of neuroimaging findings in studies of social cognition and the locus of pathology in fvFTD.
Patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) exhibit marked changes in social and emotional functioning including lack of empathy, disinhibition, altered emotional reactivity, apathy and lack of insight. These changes are believed to be dependent on progressive frontal and temporal lobe degeneration. In this review, we discuss the nature of defective theory of mind and empathy in this group and relate it to regional dysfunction in the orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortex, based on evidence from several recent studies. The role of executive ability and co-existing emotional deficits are also considered.
Lavenu et al. [Alzheimer Dis. Assoc. Disorder 5 (1999) 96] have shown that patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) show impaired recognition of facial expressions. It is not clear, however, whether these deficits arise from an impairment affecting face processing generally, emotion processing generally, or facial expression recognition alone. We address this issue by testing six patients with frontal variant frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD) on a series of face perception tasks (including facial identity and facial expression recognition), and a test of vocal emotion recognition. In general, the fvFTD participants showed impaired recognition of facial expressions in the context of preserved recognition of facial identity. In addition, however, deficits were also observed for the vocal emotion recognition task. These results are consistent with the idea that fvFTD affects the recognition of emotional signals from multiple modalities rather than facial expression processing alone. It is plausible that the emotion recognition impairments observed contribute to the abnormal social behaviour that is characteristic of this condition.
To determine whether difficulty in the early differentiation between frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and AD may arise from a failure to discriminate between the temporal and frontal variants of FTD.
Neuropsychological profiles of patients with early dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT; n = 10), the temporal variant of FTD (tv-FTD or semantic dementia; n = 5), and the frontal variant of FTD (fv-FTD; n = 10) were compared to each other and normal controls (n = 10). Structural MRI demonstrated temporal lobe atrophy in the tv-FTD patients and frontal lobe atrophy in the fv-FTD group.
Subjects with tv-FTD showed severe deficits in semantic memory with preservation of attention and executive function. Subjects with fv-FTD showed the reverse pattern. Attention and executive function impairment separated the fv-FTD patients from the early DAT subjects, who were densely amnesic.
The double dissociation in performance on semantic memory and attention/executive function clearly separated the temporal and frontal variants of FTD and aids the early differentiation of FTD from AD. The characteristic cognitive profiles reflect the distribution of pathology within each syndrome and support the putative role of the inferolateral temporal neocortex in semantic memory, the medial temporal lobe structures of the hippocampal complex in episodic memory, and the frontal lobes in executive function.
To facilitate a multidimensional approach to empathy the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) includes 4 subscales: Perspective-Taking (PT) Fantasy (FS) Empathic Concern (EC) and Personal Distress (PD). The aim of the present study was to establish the convergent and discriminant validity of these 4 subscales. Hypothesized relationships among the IRI subscales between the subscales and measures of other psychological constructs (social functioning self-esteem emotionality and sensitivity to others) and between the subscales and extant empathy measures were examined. Study subjects included 677 male and 667 female students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes at the University of Texas. The IRI scales not only exhibited the predicted relationships among themselves but also were related in the expected manner to other measures. Higher PT scores were consistently associated with better social functioning and higher self-esteem; in contrast Fantasy scores were unrelated to these 2 characteristics. High EC scores were positively associated with shyness and anxiety but negatively linked to egotism. The most substantial relationships in the study involved the PD scale. PD scores were strongly linked with low self-esteem and poor interpersonal functioning as well as a constellation of vulnerability uncertainty and fearfulness. These findings support a multidimensional approach to empathy by providing evidence that the 4 qualities tapped by the IRI are indeed separate constructs each related in specific ways to other psychological measures.
An international group of clinical and basic scientists participated in the Frontotemporal Dementia and Pick's Disease Criteria Conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md, on July 7, 2000, to reassess clinical and neuropathological criteria for the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Previous criteria for FTD have primarily been designed for research purposes. The goal of this meeting was to propose guidelines that would enable clinicians (particularly neurologists, psychiatrists, and neuropsychologists) to recognize patients with FTD and, if appropriate, to expedite their referral to a diagnostic center. In addition, recommendations for the neuropathological criteria of FTD were reviewed, relative to classical neuropathology and modern molecular biology.