Diagnostic Accuracy of Affective Social Tasks in the Clinical Classification Between the Behavioral Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia and Other Neurodegenerative Disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 1401-1411
Author(s):  
Alessandra Dodich ◽  
Chiara Crespi ◽  
Gaia C. Santi ◽  
Simona Luzzi ◽  
Valentina Ranaldi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Clinical Criteria ◽  
Cognitive Markers ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
Healthy Control ◽  
One Way Anova

Background: Severe socio-emotional impairments characterize the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). However, literature reports social cognition disorders in other dementias. Objective: In this study, we investigated the accuracy of social cognition performances in the early and differential diagnosis of bvFTD. Methods: We included 131 subjects: 32 bvFTD, 26 Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 16 primary progressive aphasia (PPA), 17 corticobasal syndrome (CBS), and 40 healthy control (HC). Each subject completed the Ekman 60 faces (Ek-60F) test assessing basic emotion recognition and the Story-based Empathy Task (SET) assessing attribution of intentions/emotions. A combined social measure (i.e., Emotion Recognition and Attribution (ERA) index) was calculated. One-way ANOVA has been used to compare performances among groups, while receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve tested measures ability to distinguish subjects with and without bvFTD. Results: Ek-60F and ERA index scores were significantly lower in bvFTD versus HC, AD, and PPA groups. ROC analyses significantly distinguished bvFTD from HC (AUC 0.82–0.92), with the Ek-60F test showing the highest performance, followed by the ERA index. These two social measures showed the best accuracy in detecting bvFTD from AD (AUC 0.78–0.74) and PPA (AUC 0.80–0.76). Investigated measures failed in detecting bvFTD from CBS. Conclusion: Accuracy analyses support the advantage of using social cognition tests for bvFTD diagnosis. Short social battery may reduce uncertainties and improve disease identification in clinical settings. We recommend a revision of current clinical criteria considering neuropsychological deficits in emotion recognition and processing tasks as key cognitive markers of this neurodegenerative syndrome.

scholarly journals Social Cognition Deficits Are Pervasive across Both Classical and Overlap Frontotemporal Dementia Syndromes

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-126
Author(s):  
Faheem Arshad ◽  
Avanthi Paplikar ◽  
Shailaja Mekala ◽  
Feba Varghese ◽  
Vandana Valiyaparambath Purushothaman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Reactivity Index ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Significant Impairment

<b><i>Objectives:</i></b> Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) syndromes are a complex group of disorders characterised by profound changes in behaviour and cognition. Many of the observed behavioural abnormalities are now recognised to be due to impaired social cognition. While deficits in emotion recognition and empathy are well-recognised in behavioural-variant (Bv)FTD, limited information exists about the nature of social cognitive impairment in the language variant primary progressive aphasia (PPA) that includes progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) and semantic dementia (SD), and in the motor variants FTD amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (FTD-ALS) and FTD progressive supranuclear palsy (FTD-PSP). This prospective study sought to explore the nature and profile of social cognition deficits across the spectrum of FTD. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Sixty patients on the FTD spectrum, i.e., classical (16 with BvFTD and 20 with PPA) and overlap FTD syndromes (13 with FTD-ALS and 11 with FTD-PSP) were evaluated by means of the social cognition tasks, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) for empathy, and pictures of facial affect (POFA) for emotion recognition. General cognition and behaviour were also assessed. <b><i>Results:</i></b> A significant impairment in emotion recognition and empathy was detected in both the classical and overlap FTD syndromes. The recognition of positive emotions was relatively preserved compared to that of negative emotions. Among the FTD subtypes, maximal impairment of empathy was demonstrated in FTD-PSP. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Social cognition impairment is pervasive across the spectrum of FTD disorders, and tests of emotion recognition and empathy are clinically useful to identify the nature of behavioural problems in both classical and overlap FTD. Our findings also have implications for understanding the neural basis of social cognition in FTD.

scholarly journals Differences in Sex Distribution Between Genetic and Sporadic Frontotemporal Dementia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Sterre C.M. de Boer ◽  
Lina Riedl ◽  
Sven J. van der Lee ◽  
Markus Otto ◽  
Sarah Anderl-Straub ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
The Other ◽  
Genetic Mutations ◽  
Sex Distribution ◽  
Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Clinical Criteria ◽  
Primary Progressive ◽  
Sporadic Cases ◽  
Semantic Variant

Background: Reported sex distributions differ between frontotemporal dementia (FTD) cohorts. Possible explanations are the evolving clinical criteria of FTD and its subtypes and the discovery of FTD causal genetic mutations that has resulted in varying demographics. Objective: Our aim was to determine the sex distribution of sporadic and genetic FTD cases and its subtypes in an international cohort. Methods: We included 910 patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 654), non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA; n = 99), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA; n = 117), and right temporal variant frontotemporal dementia (rtvFTD; n = 40). We compared sex distribution between genetic and sporadic FTD using χ2-tests. Results: The genetic FTD group consisted of 51.2% males, which did not differ from sporadic FTD (57.8% male, p = 0.08). In the sporadic bvFTD subgroup, males were predominant in contrast to genetic bvFTD (61.6% versus 52.9% males, p = 0.04). In the other clinical FTD subgroups, genetic cases were underrepresented and within the sporadic cases sex distribution was somewhat equal. Conclusion: The higher male prevalence in sporadic bvFTD may provide important clues for its differential pathogenesis and warrants further research.

Utility of an abbreviated version of the executive and social cognition battery in the detection of executive deficits in early behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia patients

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
EZEQUIEL GLEICHGERRCHT ◽  
TERESA TORRALVA ◽  
MARÍA ROCA ◽  
FACUNDO MANES
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Diagnostic Feature ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Discriminatory Accuracy ◽  
Dementia Patients ◽  
Executive Deficits ◽  
Important Diagnostic Feature

AbstractThe detection of executive deficits in early behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is crucial, as impairments in the executive domain constitute an important diagnostic feature of the newly proposed diagnostic criteria for bvFTD. Our group has recently demonstrated that classical executive tests fail to detect the executive deficits of a subgroup of early bvFTD patients. When administered an executive and social cognition battery (ESCB) that includes tasks that mimic everyday scenarios (e.g., affective decision-making, planning and organization, theory of mind), however, the performance of those bvFTD patients differed significantly from that of controls. One limitation of the ESCB is its lengthy nature (approximately 90 min). For this reason, the present study analyzes the usefulness of alternative shorter versions of this battery. We propose one particular two-task combination that demands approximately 30 min for its administration and scoring, and which presents similar discriminatory accuracy as that of the complete ESCB, while maintaining its significantly superior capacity to detect subtle executive deficits in bvFTD patients relative to classical executive tests. We suggest that, in clinical settings where tools, time, or human resources are scarce, this abbreviated ESCB may be useful in the detection of subtle yet impairing executive impairments of patients with bvFTD. (JINS, 2010,16, 687–694.)

Cognición social en niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad: una revisión narrativa de la literatura

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Ma. Guillermina Yáñez-Téllez ◽  
Daniel Hernández-Torres
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Pragmatic Language ◽  
Affective Prosody ◽  
Palabras Clave

Los niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad (TDAH) presentan problemas en la interacción social, los cuales pueden ser atribuidos a deficiencias en la cognición social (CS), no obstante, esta función ha sido poco estudiada en esta población. El objetivo de este trabajo fue realizar una revisión de la literatura de los últimos 18 años acerca de la CS en niños con TDAH, en los subdominios de teoría de la mente, reconocimiento de emociones en rostros, lenguaje pragmático y prosodia afectiva. Se realizó una búsqueda en las bases de datos PubMed y Scopus, combinando las siguientes palabras clave: “ADHD”, “social cognition”, “theory of mind”, “emotion recognition”, “pragmatic language” y “affective prosody”. Se seleccionaron artículos desde el 2000 hasta el 2018. El reconocimiento de emociones en rostros es el déficit en CS más reportado, encontrándose fallas en la comprensión de gestos de miedo, tristeza, felicidad y enojo, aunque no de manera consistente. Asimismo, se reportan deficiencias en la teoría de la mente, principalmente en la referencia social, entendimiento de emociones básicas, metarrepresentaciones, inferencias de segundo orden y comprensión de juicios sociales complejos.

scholarly journals Frontotemporal dementia, music perception and social cognition share neurobiological circuits: A meta-analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 105660
Author(s):  
Jochum J. van't Hooft ◽  
Yolande A.L. Pijnenburg ◽  
Sietske A.M. Sikkes ◽  
Philip Scheltens ◽  
Jacoba M. Spikman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Meta Analysis

scholarly journals Breakdowns in Informativeness of Naturalistic Speech Production in Primary Progressive Aphasia

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Jeanne Gallée ◽  
Claire Cordella ◽  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Daisy Hochberg ◽  
Alexandra Touroutoglou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Speech Analysis ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Functional Communication ◽  
Or Efficiency ◽  
Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Primary Progressive ◽  
Communication Impairment ◽  
Semantic Variant ◽  
Lower Production

“Functional communication” refers to an individual’s ability to communicate effectively in his or her everyday environment, and thus is a paramount skill to monitor and target therapeutically in people with aphasia. However, traditional controlled-paradigm assessments commonly used in both research and clinical settings often fail to adequately capture this ability. In the current study, facets of functional communication were measured from picture-elicited speech samples from 70 individuals with mild primary progressive aphasia (PPA), including the three variants, and 31 age-matched controls. Building upon methods recently used by Berube et al. (2019), we measured the informativeness of speech by quantifying the content of each patient’s description that was relevant to a picture relative to the total amount of speech they produced. Importantly, form-based errors, such as mispronunciations of words, unusual word choices, or grammatical mistakes are not penalized in this approach. We found that the relative informativeness, or efficiency, of speech was preserved in non-fluent variant PPA patients as compared with controls, whereas the logopenic and semantic variant PPA patients produced significantly less informative output. Furthermore, reduced informativeness in the semantic variant is attributable to a lower production of content units and a propensity for self-referential tangents, whereas for the logopenic variant, a lower production of content units and relatively ”empty” speech and false starts contribute to this reduction. These findings demonstrate that functional communication impairment does not uniformly affect all the PPA variants and highlight the utility of naturalistic speech analysis for measuring the breakdown of functional communication in PPA.

scholarly journals DNA Methylation in LIME1 and SPTBN2 Genes Is Associated with Attention Deficit in Children

Children ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Sung-Chou Li ◽  
Ho-Chang Kuo ◽  
Lien-Hung Huang ◽  
Wen-Jiun Chou ◽  
Sheng-Yu Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dna Methylation ◽  
Attention Deficit ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Neurodevelopmental Disorder ◽  
Continuous Performance Test ◽  
Attention Deficits ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Hyperactivity Disorder ◽  
Cpg Sites ◽  
Healthy Control

DNA methylation levels are associated with neurodevelopment. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), characterized by attention deficits, is a common neurodevelopmental disorder. We used methylation microarray and pyrosequencing to detect peripheral blood DNA methylation markers of ADHD. DNA methylation profiling data from the microarray assays identified potential differentially methylated CpG sites between 12 ADHD patients and 9 controls. Five candidate CpG sites (cg00446123, cg20513976, cg07922513, cg17096979, and cg02506324) in four genes (LIME1, KCNAB2, CAPN9, and SPTBN2) were further examined with pyrosequencing. The attention of patients were tested using the Conners’ Continuous Performance Test (CPT). In total, 126 ADHD patients with a mean age of 9.2 years (78.6% males) and 72 healthy control subjects with a mean age of 9.3 years (62.5% males) were recruited. When all participants were categorized by their CPT performance, the DNA methylation levels in LIME1 (cg00446123 and cg20513976) were found to be significantly higher and those in SPTBN2 (cg02506324) were significantly lower in children with worse CPT performance. Therefore, DNA methylation of two CpG sites in LIME1 and one CpG site in SPTBN2 is associated with attention deficits in children. DNA methylation biomarkers may assist in identifying attention deficits of children in clinical settings.

Emotion Recognition Deficits in Psychiatric Disorders as a Target of Non-invasive Neuromodulation: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 155005942199168
Author(s):  
Yuji Yamada ◽  
Takuma Inagawa ◽  
Naotsugu Hirabayashi ◽  
Tomiki Sumiyoshi
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Parietal Lobe ◽  
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Cognitive Benefits ◽  
The Right ◽  
English Articles

Background. Social cognition deficits are a core feature of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorder, and deteriorate the functionality of patients. However, no definite strategy has been established to treat social cognition (eg, emotion recognition) impairments in these illnesses. Here, we provide a systematic review of the literature regarding transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for the treatment of social cognition deficits in individuals with psychiatric disorders. Methods. A literature search was conducted on English articles identified by PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases, according to the guidelines of the PRISMA statement. We defined the inclusion criteria as follows: (1) randomized controlled trials (RCTs), (2) targeting patients with psychiatric disorders (included in F20-F39 of the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems [ICD-10]), (3) evaluating the effect of tDCS or rTMS, (4) reporting at least one standardized social cognition test. Results. Five papers (3 articles on tDCS and 2 articles on rTMS) met the inclusion criteria which deal with schizophrenia or depression. The significant effects of tDCS or rTMS targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on the emotion recognition domain were reported in patients with schizophrenia or depression. In addition, rTMS on the right inferior parietal lobe was shown to ameliorate social perception impairments of schizophrenia. Conclusions. tDCS and rTMS may enhance some domains of social cognition in patients with psychiatric disorders. Further research is warranted to identify optimal parameters to maximize the cognitive benefits of these neuromodulation methods.

scholarly journals Self-serving social strategies: A systematic review of social cognition in narcissism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare M. Eddy
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Clinical Samples ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Concurrent Administration ◽  
Narcissistic Personality

AbstractNarcissistic Personality Disorder is characterised by inflated self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interpersonal difficulties associated with narcissistic personality may be becoming more widespread given its increasing prevalence within the general population. This systematic review investigated the relationship between narcissistic personality traits and social cognition (i.e. theory of mind; emotion recognition; empathy; emotional intelligence) in clinical and non-clinical samples. Cognitive empathy (i.e. perspective taking) appears unlikely to be impaired, while affective empathy (relating to another’s emotion state) may be reduced in association with narcissism. Those with grandiose narcissism rate their empathic skills more highly than those with vulnerable narcissism, but concurrent administration of objective measures is rare, limiting insight into the validity of self-ratings. Rather than deficits in aspects of social cognition, the overall pattern could reflect motivation, or advantageous use of social cognitive skills to serve the self. Indeed, interpersonal strategies associated with narcissism (e.g. deception; manipulation) suggest the application of understanding another’s beliefs or desires in the context of low empathy. Further research should seek to explore performance on a wider range of emotion recognition and theory of mind tasks, and whether characteristics such as excessive jealousy and paranoia could reflect hyper-mentalizing.

Frontotemporal dementia and financial capacity: facing the Cerberus of overestimation or underestimation?

2021 ◽  
pp. 103985622110054
Author(s):  
Vaitsa Giannouli ◽  
Magda Tsolaki
Keyword(s):  
Financial Performance ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Depression And Anxiety ◽  
Financial Capacity ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
Visuospatial Skills ◽  
Anxiety Depression

Objective: This study investigates the performance of people with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) on objective assessment of financial capacity with comparison to the estimation of financial capacity by both people themselves and their caregivers. Method: FTD patients and healthy (age/gender/education-matched) controls from Greece underwent cognitive assessment (memory, attention, executive functioning, visuospatial skills, verbal functions), emotional (anxiety, depression), and financial capacity assessment (Legal Capacity for Property Law Transactions Assessment Scale—LCPLTAS). Additionally, they self-reported on their financial performance and a third-party living with the older participants for both groups reported their estimates of financial performance and their anxiety and depression levels. Results: Financial capacity in FTD patients is severely impaired compared to controls, but caregivers of FTD patients tend to overestimate the patients’ financial performance, a finding that is not related to the caregivers’ depression and anxiety levels or other demographics. FTD patients overestimate their financial capacity. Conclusion: FTD may have significant impact on financial capacity, but people with FTD tend to overestimate their own financial capacity. This study also indicates that families and caregivers tend to overestimate financial capacity in people with FTD. This has implications for the assessment and care planning of people with FTD in clinical settings.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document