Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:57:11.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Recognition of Positive Vocalizations Is Impaired in Behavioral-Variant Frontotemporal Dementia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2013

Sharpley Hsieh
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia
John R Hodges
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia
Olivier Piguet*
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to: Olivier Piguet, Neuroscience Research Australia, PO Box 1165, Randwick, NSW, 2031. E-mail: o.piguet@neura.edu.au

Abstract

Recognition of negative emotions is impaired in behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Less is known about the identification of positive emotions. One limitation likely arises from the stimulus sets used in previous studies. The widely used Ekman 60 Faces Test, for example, consists of four negative emotions (anger, fear, disgust and sadness) but only one positive emotion (happiness). Here, patients with bvFTD (n = 9), AD (n = 9), and controls (n = 15) recognized a range of experimentally-validated positive and negative non-verbal vocalizations (e.g., cheers for triumph; retching for disgust) that have recently become available. The bvFTD group was impaired in the recognition of both positive and negative vocalizations. In contrast, performance in the AD cohort was comparable to that of controls. Findings in the bvFTD group point to a global emotion recognition deficit in this syndrome. These results are consistent with a growing body of research showing that deficits also extend to positive emotions. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–5)

Type
Brief Communication
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. (1994). Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature, 372(6507), 669672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belin, P., Fecteau, S., Bedard, C. (2004). Thinking the voice: Neural correlates of voice perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 129135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berg, L., Miller, J.P., Baty, J., Rubin, E.H., Morris, J.C., Figiel, G. (1992). Mild senile dementia of the Alzheimer type. 4. Evaluation of intervention. Annals of Neurology, 31(3), 242249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, H.A., Anderson, A.K. (2012). Understanding disgust. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1251, 6276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Drapeau, J., Gosselin, N., Gagnon, L., Peretz, I., Lorrain, D. (2009). Emotional recognition from face, voice, and music in dementia of the Alzheimer type. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169, 342345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fecteau, S., Belin, P., Joanette, Y., Armony, J.L. (2007). Amygdala responses to nonlinguistic emotional vocalizations. Neuroimage, 36(2), 480487.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hsieh, S., Foxe, D., Leslie, F., Savage, S., Piguet, O., Hodges, J.R. (2012). Grief and joy: Emotion word comprehension in the dementias. Neuropsychology, 26(5), 624630.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hsieh, S., Hornberger, M., Piguet, O., Hodges, J.R. (2012). Brain correlates of musical and facial emotion recognition: Evidence from the dementias. Neuropsychologia, 50(8), 18141822.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kumfor, F., Piguet, O. (2012). Disturbance of emotion processing in frontotemporal dementia: A synthesis of cognitive and neuroimaging findings. Neuropsychology Review, 11, 11.Google Scholar
McKhann, G.M., Knopman, D.S., Chertkow, H., Hyman, B.T., Jack, C.R. Jr., Kawas, C.H., Phelps, C.H. (2011). The diagnosis of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease: Recommendations from the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer's Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers & Dementia, 7(3), 263269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mioshi, E., Dawson, K., Mitchell, J., Arnold, R., Hodges, J.R. (2006). The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination Revised (ACE-R): A brief cognitive test battery for dementia screening. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 21(11), 10781085.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Omar, R., Henley, S.M., Bartlett, J.W., Hailstone, J.C., Gordon, E., Sauter, D.A., Warren, J.D. (2011). The structural neuroanatomy of music emotion recognition: Evidence from frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Neuroimage, 56(3), 18141821.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phelps, E.A., LeDoux, J.E. (2005). Contributions of the amygdala to emotion processing: From animal models to human behavior. Neuron, 48(2), 175187.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rabinovici, G.D., Seeley, W.W., Kim, E.J., Gorno-Tempini, M.L., Rascovsky, K., Pagliaro, T.A., Rosen, H.J. (2008). Distinct MRI atrophy patterns in autopsy-proven Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias, 22(6), 474488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rascovsky, K., Hodges, J.R., Knopman, D., Mendez, M.F., Kramer, J.H., Neuhaus, J., Miller, B.L. (2011). Sensitivity of revised diagnostic criteria for the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia. Brain, 134(9), 24562477.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rohrer, J.D., Sauter, D., Scott, S., Rossor, M.N., Warren, J.D. (2012). Receptive prosody in nonfluent primary progressive aphasias. Cortex, 48(3), 308316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sauter, D.A., Scott, S.K. (2007). More than one kind of happiness: Can we recognize vocal expressions of different positive states? Motivation and Emotion, 31(3), 192199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toivonen, R., Kivela, M., Saramaki, J., Viinikainen, M., Vanhatalo, M., Sams, M. (2012). Networks of emotion concepts. PLoS One, 7(1), e28883.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, H. (1993). On measuring performance in category judment studies of nonverbal behaviour. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 17(1), 328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, A.W., Perrett, D.I., Calder, A.J., Sprengelmeyer, R., Ekman, P. (2002). Facial expressions of emotions: Stimuli and test (FEEST). Thurstone, UK: Thames Valley Test Company.Google Scholar