Observation of Social Behavior in Frontotemporal Dementia

Mendez, Mario F.; Fong, Sylvia S.; Shapira, Jill; Jimenez, Elvira; Kaiser, Natalie C.; Kremen, Sarah; Tsai, Po-Heng

doi:10.1177/1533317513517035

Cited by 44 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Lastly, we cannot know how much these results generalize to other contexts, situations, or late onset forms of dementia. Nevertheless, the findings are consistent with observational studies and informant based reports on visual fixation specifically in bvFTD patients [6,7] In conclusion, findings from this study support evidence of an inappropriate prolonged visual fixation during exposure to visual stimuli with human faces in bvFTD. This prolonged and fixed staring may be another form of social disinhibition, or an impairment of interest expression, or a release of primitive reflexes, associated with a diagnosis of bvFTD and frontal neuropathology.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Shortened or prolonged staring can violate personal boundaries and cause feeling of discomfort in others [5]. Early in the course of bvFTD, major impairments in social cognition and social behavior [6,7] often present with poor social tact, decreased social manners and propriety [14], while they were able to maintain level of performance in frontal executive tasks. Consistent with these studies, the participants with bvFTD had a greater severity of apathy and disinhibition than the eAD group while their performances on neuropsychological tests were comparable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, on the Social Dysfunction Scale, informants report that patients with bvFTD tend to exhibit an uncomfortably prolonged gaze when interacting with others [6]. Although there are clear observations of impaired social gaze in bvFTD [7], there is little literature actually studying social gaze among patients with this disorder.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prolonged Visual Facial Grasp in Frontotemporal Dementia

Paholpak

Liang

Carr

et al. 2016

JAD

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Abstract.Background: Gaze and eye contact is a critical aspect of social interaction. Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) may exhibit abnormally prolonged stare toward human faces. Objective: To study characteristics of social gaze in patients with bvFTD compared to age and education matched-patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease (eAD) and healthy controls (HC). Method: Fifty picture stimuli were presented to each participant (bvFTD = 12, eAD = 18, HC = 13). Each stimuli contained two properties: face (facial versus non-facial) and valence (positive, negative, and neutral). The "facial" stimuli contained human faces. The participants Visual Fixation Time (VFT) was measured for each picture stimuli of interest (per facial expressions on the Facial Action Coding System). A linear mixed-effects regression model with participant-level of random effects was used to compare VFTs between groups. Results: The patients with bvFTD showed significantly prolonged VFTs to faces than the patients with eAD and the HC, regardless of valence (all p < 0.01). There were no differences in VFTs for non-facial stimuli between patients with bvFTD and eAD. However, patients with bvFTD and eAD had significantly prolonged VFTs to negative non-facial stimuli than the HC (p = 0.006 and 0.019, respectively). Conclusion: Patients with bvFTD exhibited a prolonged stare toward human faces. This prolonged visual facial grasp may contribute to the disturbed social interactions of patients with bvFTD and can help distinguish them from those with Alzheimer's disease and other conditions. Additionally, both dementia groups tended to stare at negative stimuli whether faces or non-faces.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prolonged Visual Facial Grasp in Frontotemporal Dementia

Paholpak

Liang

Carr

et al. 2016

JAD

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“…We evaluated patients with bvFTD. bvFTD is a neurodegenerative disease associated with progressive frontal and anterior temporal atrophy that results in inappropriate social behavior and executive difficulty (Mendez et al, 2014; Rascovsky et al, 2011). These patients have difficulty on tasks requiring inference-making such as Theory of Mind (Adenzato, Cavallo, & Enrici, 2010; Gregory, Lough, Stone, & Erzinclioglu, 2002; Pardini et al, 2013; Torralva et al, 2007), although inference-making has rarely been assessed explicitly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond words: Pragmatic inference in behavioral variant of frontotemporal degeneration

et al. 2015

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When the message of a speaker goes beyond the literal or logical meaning of the sentences used, a pragmatic inference is required to understand the complete meaning of an utterance. Here we study one example of pragmatic inference, called scalar implicature. Such an inference is required when a weaker term “some” is used in a sentence like “Some of the students passed the exam” because the speaker presumably had a reason not to use a stronger term like “all”. We investigated the comprehension of scalar implicatures in a group of 17 non-aphasic patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD) in order to test the contribution of non-linguistic decision-making ability and the role of prefrontal cortex in supporting the computation of pragmatic inferences. The results of two experiments point to a deficit in producing alternative interpretations beyond a logical reading. bvFTD patients thus prefer the narrowly literal or logical interpretation of a scalar term when they must generate a possible alternative interpretation by themselves, but patients prefer a pragmatic reading when offered a choice between the logical and the pragmatic interpretation of the same sentence. An imaging analysis links bvFTD patients’ spontaneous tendency toward a narrowly logical interpretation with atrophy in ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Our findings are consistent with the pragmatic tolerance hypothesis, which proposes that difficulty generating alternative interpretations of an utterance, rather than a frank inability to compute an inference, affects the comprehension of a scalar term.

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“…, Mendez et al . ) were closely related to our question but did not fit exactly because of the focus on social behaviour instead of needs.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 92%

What is known about the subjective needs of people with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia? A scoping review

Dinand

Nover

Holle

et al. 2015

Health Soc Care Community

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Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is an early-onset and progressive neurodegenerative disease associated with strong changes in judgement, behaviour, personality and emotions. These changes can cause significant problems in everyday life for people with bvFTD and their families, and have implications for health and society. Currently, there are no suitable evidence-based specific interventions for people with bvFTD. This scoping review aims to identify the self-expressed needs, demands and coping strategies of people with bvFTD. Identifying these issues is the first step towards the development of need-based psycho-social interventions for people with bvFTD. A comprehensive literature research was conducted of German and English scientific articles published between January 2000 and October 2014 using the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PSYNDEX, SocINDEX, GeroLit, the Cochrane Library, ProQuest, the German National Library and additional search strategies in terms of a scoping review. Articles were identified by combining search terms related to 'frontotemporal dementia' with terms related to 'self-expressions', 'needs/demands' and 'coping'. After excluding duplicates, two independent reviewers screened the titles and abstracts of 2317 records for eligibility. Because eligibility could not be assessed from the titles or abstracts of 28 articles, those articles were assessed using the full text. One poster abstract met our research question and a few articles were related, but no article met all of the inclusion criteria. This lack of scientifically based knowledge concerning the perspective of people with bvFTD is discussed with reference to the search strategy and the research questions, disease-related aspects such as changes in behaviour or language and emotions and the difficulties in researching this topic. Recommendations are formulated for future research considering the perspective of people with bvFTD and that will involve the development of appropriate data collection methods. Subsequently, specialised interventions must be developed.

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Observation of Social Behavior in Frontotemporal Dementia

Cited by 44 publications

References 35 publications

Prolonged Visual Facial Grasp in Frontotemporal Dementia

Prolonged Visual Facial Grasp in Frontotemporal Dementia

Beyond words: Pragmatic inference in behavioral variant of frontotemporal degeneration

What is known about the subjective needs of people with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia? A scoping review

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