Loss of empathy is an early central symptom and diagnostic criterion of the behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Although changes in empathy are evident and strongly affect the social functioning of bvFTD patients, few studies have directly investigated this issue by means of experimental paradigms. The current study assessed multiple components of empathy (affective, cognitive and moral) in bvFTD patients. We also explored whether the loss of empathy constitutes a primary deficit of bvFTD or whether it is explained by impairments in executive functions (EF) or other social cognition domains. Thirty-seven bvFTD patients with early/mild stages of the disease and 30 healthy control participants were assessed with a task that involves the perception of intentional and accidental harm. Participants were also evaluated on emotion recognition, theory of mind (ToM), social norms knowledge and several EF domains. BvFTD patients presented deficits in affective, cognitive and moral aspects of empathy. However, empathic concern was the only aspect primarily affected in bvFTD that was neither related nor explained by deficits in EF or other social cognition domains. Deficits in the cognitive and moral aspects of empathy seem to depend on EF, emotion recognition and ToM. Our findings highlight the importance of using tasks depicting real-life social scenarios because of their greater sensitivity in the assessment of bvFTD. Moreover, our results contribute to the understanding of primary and intrinsic empathy deficits of bvFTD and have important theoretical and clinical implications.

One of the most important sequela in persons who suffer from acquired brain injury is a behavioral disorder. To date, the primary approaches for the rehabilitation of this sequela are Applied Behavior Analysis, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, and Comprehensive-Holistic Rehabilitation Programs. Despite this theoretical plurality, none of these approaches focuses on rehabilitating behavioral disorders considering the relation between affordance and environmental adaptation. To introduce this therapeutic view to neurorehabilitation, we apply the theoretical tenets of the enactive paradigm to the rehabilitation of a woman with severe behavioral and cognitive impairment. Over seventeen sessions, her behavioral and cognitive performance was assessed in relation to two seated affordances (seated on a chair and seated on a ball 65 cm in diameter) and the environmental adaptation while she was working on various cognitive tasks. These two seated affordances allowed to incorporate the theoretical assumptions of the enactive approach and to know how the behavior and the cognition were modified based on these two postural settings and the environmental adaptation. The findings indicate that the subject exhibited better behavioral (physical and verbal) and cognitive (matching success and complex task) performances when the woman worked on the therapeutic ball than when the woman was on the chair. The enactive paradigm applied in neurorehabilitation introduces a level of treatment that precedes behavior and cognition. This theoretical consideration allowed the discovery of a better relation between a seated affordance and the environmental adaptation for the improvement behavioral and cognitive performance in our case study.

Objective: Psychosocial trauma was associated with developing conversion disorder (also known as functional neurological disorder) before Freud, though why a particular symptom should arise is unknown. We aimed to determine if there was a relationship between trauma type and symptom. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients attending Australia’s first functional neurology clinic, including referral, clinic letters and a clinic questionnaire. Results: There were 106 females, 43 males and five transgender patients. Sensory (51%), motor (47%) and seizures (39%) were the commonest functional symptoms. Most patients (92%) reported stressors associated with symptom onset. Multiple trauma/symptom type associations were found: patients with in-law problems experienced more cognitive symptoms ( p = .036), for example, while expressive speech problems more commonly followed relationship difficulties ( p = .021). Conclusion: Associations were found between type of traumatic events and type of symptoms in conversion disorder. This will require verification in a larger sample.

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The Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) accounts for speech rhythm, grouping of sounds as either Iambs—if alternating in duration—or Trochees—if alternating in pitch and/or intensity. The two different rhythms signal word order, one of the basic syntactic properties of language. We investigated the extent to which Iambic and Trochaic phrases could be auditorily and visually recognized, when visual stimuli engage lip reading. Our results show both rhythmic patterns were recognized from both, auditory and visual stimuli, suggesting that speech rhythm has a multimodal representation. We further explored whether participants could match Iambic and Trochaic phrases across the two modalities. We found that participants auditorily familiarized with Trochees, but not with Iambs, were more accurate in recognizing visual targets, while participants visually familiarized with Iambs, but not with Trochees, were more accurate in recognizing auditory targets. The latter results suggest an asymmetric processing of speech rhythm: in auditory domain, the changes in either pitch or intensity are better perceived and represented than changes in duration, while in the visual domain the changes in duration are better processed and represented than changes in pitch, raising important questions about domain general and specialized mechanisms for speech rhythm processing.