Emotion recognition is impaired across modalities in manifest Huntington’s disease

Aims There is increasing interest in the nature of the emotion recognition deficit in Huntington’s disease (HD) with conflicting reports of disproportionate impairments for some emotions in some modalities. This review aimed to clarify the pattern of emotion recognition deficits in HD. Methods A systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted for studies investigating emotion recognition in Huntington’s disease. Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and PubMed were searched from 1993 to 2010, and citation and reference list searches were also conducted. 1724 citations were identified. Results Sixteen studies met inclusion criteria. In manifest HD recognition of facial anger was found most consistently, although recognition of all negative emotions (facial and vocal) tended to be impaired. In premanifest HD impairments were inconsistent, but are seen in all facial expressions of negative emotion. Inconsistency may represent the variability inherent in HD although may also be due to between-study differences in methodology. Conclusions Current evidence supports the conclusion that recognition of all negative emotions tends to be impaired in HD, particularly in the facial domain. Future work should focus on using more ecologically-valid tests, and testing inter-modality differences

Processing emotion from abstract art in frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Abstract art may signal emotions independently of a biological or social carrier: it might therefore constitute a test case for defining brain mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and the impact of disease states on those mechanisms. This is potentially of particular relevance to diseases in the frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) spectrum. These diseases are often led by emotional impairment despite retained or enhanced artistic interest in at least some patients. However, the processing of emotion from art has not been studied systematically in FTLD. Here we addressed this issue using a novel emotional valence matching task on abstract paintings in patients representing major syndromes of FTLD (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, n=11; sematic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), n=7; nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), n=6) relative to healthy older individuals (n=39). Performance on art emotion valence matching was compared between groups taking account of perceptual matching performance and assessed in relation to facial emotion matching using customised control tasks. Neuroanatomical correlates of art emotion processing were assessed using voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MR images. All patient groups had a deficit of art emotion processing relative to healthy controls; there were no significant interactions between syndromic group and emotion modality. Poorer art emotion valence matching performance was associated with reduced grey matter volume in right lateral occopitotemporal cortex in proximity to regions previously implicated in the processing of dynamic visual signals. Our findings suggest that abstract art may be a useful model system for investigating mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and aesthetic processing in neurodegenerative diseases

Humour processing in frontotemporal lobar degeneration: A behavioural and neuroanatomical analysis.

Humour is a complex cognitive and emotional construct that is vulnerable in neurodegenerative diseases, notably the frontotemporal lobar degenerations. However, humour processing in these diseases has been little studied. Here we assessed humour processing in patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (n = 22, mean age 67 years, four female) and semantic dementia (n = 11, mean age 67 years, five female) relative to healthy individuals (n = 21, mean age 66 years, 11 female), using a joint cognitive and neuroanatomical approach. We created a novel neuropsychological test requiring a decision about the humorous intent of nonverbal cartoons, in which we manipulated orthogonally humour content and familiarity of depicted scenarios. Structural neuroanatomical correlates of humour detection were assessed using voxel-based morphometry. Assessing performance in a signal detection framework and after adjusting for standard measures of cognitive function, both patient groups showed impaired accuracy of humour detection in familiar and novel scenarios relative to healthy older controls (p < .001). Patient groups showed similar overall performance profiles; however the behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia group alone showed a significant advantage for detection of humour in familiar relative to novel scenarios (p = .045), suggesting that the behavioural variant syndrome may lead to particular difficulty decoding novel situations for humour, while semantic dementia produces a more general deficit of humour detection that extends to stock comedic situations. Humour detection accuracy was associated with grey matter volume in a distributed network including temporo-parietal junctional and anterior superior temporal cortices, with predominantly left-sided correlates of processing humour in familiar scenarios and right-sided correlates of processing novel humour. The findings quantify deficits of core cognitive operations underpinning humour processing in frontotemporal lobar degenerations and suggest a candidate brain substrate in cortical hub regions processing incongruity and semantic associations. Humour is a promising candidate tool with which to assess complex social signal processing in neurodegenerative disease

Emotion recognition in Huntington's disease: a systematic review.

There is increasing interest in the nature of the emotion recognition deficit in Huntington's disease (HD). There are conflicting reports of disproportionate impairments for some emotions in some modalities in HD. A systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted for studies investigating emotion recognition in HD. Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and Pubmed were searched from 1993 to 2010, and citations and reference lists were searched. 1724 citations were identified. Sixteen studies were included. In manifest HD evidence of impaired recognition of facial expressions of anger was found consistently, although recognition of all negative emotions (facial and vocal) tended to be impaired. In premanifest HD impairments were inconsistent, but are seen in all facial expressions of negative emotion. Inconsistency may represent the variability inherent in HD although may also be due to between-study differences in methodology. Current evidence supports the conclusion that recognition of all negative emotions tends to be impaired in HD, particularly in the facial domain. Future work should focus on using more ecologically-valid tests, and testing inter-modality differences

The structural neuroanatomy of music emotion recognition: Evidence from frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Despite growing clinical and neurobiological interest in the brain mechanisms that process emotion in music, these mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) frequently exhibit clinical syndromes that illustrate the effects of breakdown in emotional and social functioning. Here we investigated the neuroanatomical substrate for recognition of musical emotion in a cohort of 26 patients with FTLD (16 with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, bvFTD, 10 with semantic dementia, SemD) using voxel-based morphometry. On neuropsychological evaluation, patients with FTLD showed deficient recognition of canonical emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) from music as well as faces and voices compared with healthy control subjects. Impaired recognition of emotions from music was specifically associated with grey matter loss in a distributed cerebral network including insula, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex, anterior temporal and more posterior temporal and parietal cortices, amygdala and the subcortical mesolimbic system. This network constitutes an essential brain substrate for recognition of musical emotion that overlaps with brain regions previously implicated in coding emotional value, behavioural context, conceptual knowledge and theory of mind. Musical emotion recognition may probe the interface of these processes, delineating a profile of brain damage that is essential for the abstraction of complex social emotions