TY - JOUR
T1 - Tracking the progression of social cognition in neurodegenerative disorders
AU - Kumfor, Fiona
AU - Irish, Muireann
AU - Leyton, Cristian
AU - Miller, Laurie
AU - Lah, Suncica
AU - Devenney, Emma
AU - Hodges, John R.
AU - Piguet, Olivier
PY - 2014/10
Y1 - 2014/10
N2 - Background and purpose: Behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients experience behavioural and emotion recognition alterations, yet understanding of how socioemotional processing is affected with disease progression is minimal. Additionally, evidence suggests that bvFTD patients with limited brain atrophy on neuroimaging at presentation (bvFTD-la) have a more benign course than those with marked atrophy (bvFTDa). Longitudinal investigation of these patients, however, is lacking. Methods: We investigated general cognition, emotion recognition and sarcasm detection in 20 bvFTD (8 with limited brain atrophy) and 17 AD patients longitudinally and used mixed models analyses to determine the level and rates of decline across groups over time. Results: At baseline, all patient groups performed worse than controls on general cognition and emotion recognition measures. The bvFTD-ma group showed significant impairment on the sarcasm detection task compared with controls. Longitudinally, an overall effect of time was present for general cognition (p<0.001); however, the rate of decline did not differ across groups. Trends for interactions between time and diagnosis were observed for both emotion recognition tasks (p=0.055; p=0.062), with the bvFTD-ma group declining more rapidly than AD or bvFTD-la groups. On the sarcasm detection task, the bvFTD-ma and AD patients declined, whereas bvFTD-la patients remained stable over time (p=0.002). Conclusions: Tasks of sarcasm detection represent a clinically useful tool to differentiate between bvFTD and AD at baseline. Furthermore, tasks of socioemotional functioning can track progression within bvFTD and identify bvFTD patients more likely to show a faster rate of decline.
AB - Background and purpose: Behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients experience behavioural and emotion recognition alterations, yet understanding of how socioemotional processing is affected with disease progression is minimal. Additionally, evidence suggests that bvFTD patients with limited brain atrophy on neuroimaging at presentation (bvFTD-la) have a more benign course than those with marked atrophy (bvFTDa). Longitudinal investigation of these patients, however, is lacking. Methods: We investigated general cognition, emotion recognition and sarcasm detection in 20 bvFTD (8 with limited brain atrophy) and 17 AD patients longitudinally and used mixed models analyses to determine the level and rates of decline across groups over time. Results: At baseline, all patient groups performed worse than controls on general cognition and emotion recognition measures. The bvFTD-ma group showed significant impairment on the sarcasm detection task compared with controls. Longitudinally, an overall effect of time was present for general cognition (p<0.001); however, the rate of decline did not differ across groups. Trends for interactions between time and diagnosis were observed for both emotion recognition tasks (p=0.055; p=0.062), with the bvFTD-ma group declining more rapidly than AD or bvFTD-la groups. On the sarcasm detection task, the bvFTD-ma and AD patients declined, whereas bvFTD-la patients remained stable over time (p=0.002). Conclusions: Tasks of sarcasm detection represent a clinically useful tool to differentiate between bvFTD and AD at baseline. Furthermore, tasks of socioemotional functioning can track progression within bvFTD and identify bvFTD patients more likely to show a faster rate of decline.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908335225&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1136/jnnp-2013-307098
DO - 10.1136/jnnp-2013-307098
M3 - Article
C2 - 24569686
AN - SCOPUS:84908335225
SN - 0022-3050
VL - 85
SP - 1076
EP - 1083
JO - Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry
JF - Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry
IS - 10
ER -