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This study investigated the ability of recognizing emotion in dementia. Twenty-five patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), 25 patients with vascular dementia (VD), and 12 normal control subjects were evaluated as to general cognition, visuoperception and emotion recognition. The score on the emotion recognition task significantly correlated with that of the Mini-Mental State Examination for VD patients while this was not the case for DAT patients. Moreover, VD patients performed significantly worse than DAT patients on the emotion recognition task in spite of the fact that there was no difference in the general cognitive and visuoperceptual abilities between them. The result of this study coupled with the past studies led to the hypothesis that the relationship between intellectual deficits and the deterioration in recognizing emotions differs according to type of dementia. Caregivers in nursing homes and hospitals need to take into account their patients’ intellectual deficits but also their deteriorating ability of identifying emotions.

The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of patients with dementia to recognize facial expressions and emotional situations. We evaluated 16 patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and 15 with vascular dementia (VD) for general cognition, discrimination of facial expressions and individual faces, and recognition of facial expressions and emotional situations. VD patients performed significantly worse than DAT patients at recognizing facial emotions, even though there was no difference between them in their general cognition and visuoperceptual abilities. There was no significant difference between them in their ability to recognize emotional situations. The results of this and past studies suggest that caregivers in nursing homes and hospitals need to be aware that VD patients lose the ability to comprehend facial expressions.

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