The attribution of animacy and agency in frontotemporal dementia versus Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Impaired attribution of animacy (state of living or being sentient) and of agency (capability of intrinsically-driven action) may underlie social behavior disturbances in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). We presented the Heider and Simmel film of moving geometric shapes to 11 bvFTD patients, 11 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients, and 12 healthy controls (HCs) and rated their recorded verbal responses for animacy attribution and agency attribution. All participants had skin conductance (SC) continuously recorded while viewing the film, and all dementia participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for regions of interest. The bvFTD patients, but not the AD patients, were impaired in animacy attribution, compared to the HCs. In contrast, both bvFTD and AD groups were impaired in agency attribution, compared to the HCs, and only the HCs had increasing SC responsiveness during viewing of the film. On MRI analysis of cortical thicknesses, animacy scores significantly correlated across groups with the right pars orbitalis and opercularis; agency scores with the left inferior and superior parietal cortices and the supramarginal gyrus; and both scores with the left cingulate isthmus involved in visuospatial context. These findings suggest that bvFTD is specifically associated with impaired animacy attribution from right inferior frontal atrophy. In contrast, both dementias may have impaired agency attribution from left parietal cortical atrophy and absent SC increases during the film, a sympathetic indicator of attribution of a social “story” to the moving shapes. These findings clarify disease-related changes in social attribution and corroborate the neuroanatomical origins of animacy and agency.

Exploring the Relationship Between Deficits in Social Cognition and Neurodegenerative Dementia: A Systematic Review

“…Two articles explored attribution bias; one observed similar performance in patients with both types of dementia (Cova et al, 2012 ), while the other reported a specific animacy attribution impairment in patients with bvFTD (Fong et al, 2017b ).…”

A Functional and Neuroanatomical Model of Dehumanization

“…The affective component of mentalization is impaired early in bvFTD (Adenzato et al, 2010;Bora et al, 2015;Dodich et al, 2016;Henry et al, 2014;Orso et al, 2020;Pardini et al, 2013;Poletti et al, 2012Poletti et al, , 2013Torralva et al, 2015), and individuals with bvFTD exhibit decreased performance on moral dilemmas, where they do not foresee negative emotional reactions when contemplating directly harming others (Greene and Haidt, 2002;Greene et al, 2001). Furthermore, when viewing moving geometric shapes (Fong et al, 2017), individuals with bvFTD who have right IFG atrophy show significantly decreased anthropomorphization compared with controls. Additional evidence for impaired "humanness" perception is that individuals with frontotemporal dementia who are artists, specifically caricaturists, may draw others in a progressively distorted, nonhuman, or "alien" fashion as their dementia progresses (Mendez and Perryman, 2003).…”

Psychological and Cognitive Markers of Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia–A Clinical Neuropsychologist's View on Diagnostic Criteria and Beyond

“…An impairment in theory of mind abilities has been extensively described in bvFTD (222, 223). Deficits have been observed using different paradigms based on false-belief (224–226), detection of sarcasm (210, 227) or insincere communication (228), agency attribution (229), as well as emotional inference or attribution (209, 230, 231), emotional movement-based inference (232) and social faux pas detection and understanding (207, 209, 212, 213). While similar deficits may be observed in AD as well [e.g., (225, 229) for a review, see (233)], they seem to be variable and to depend on the severity of the disease.…”

“…Deficits have been observed using different paradigms based on false-belief (224–226), detection of sarcasm (210, 227) or insincere communication (228), agency attribution (229), as well as emotional inference or attribution (209, 230, 231), emotional movement-based inference (232) and social faux pas detection and understanding (207, 209, 212, 213). While similar deficits may be observed in AD as well [e.g., (225, 229) for a review, see (233)], they seem to be variable and to depend on the severity of the disease. In contrast to AD, theory of mind deficits in bvFTD were only sparsely or not associated with other cognitive dysfunctions(209, 225, 232) and only little associations with other cognitive dimensions in bvFTD have been found when cluster-based or regression analyses specifically investing these relationships were employed (219, 220).…”