Do Neurodegenerative Diseases Affect Creativity? Divergent Thinking in Frontotemporal Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease

Ruggiero, Fabiana; Cortese, Francesca; Lavazza, Andrea; D’Urso, Giulio; Nuzzo, Chiara Di; Marceglia, Sara; Pravettoni, Gabriella; Ferrucci, Roberta

doi:10.1080/10400419.2019.1577667

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Patients with the behavioral variant of FTD, characterized primarily by frontal alterations and significant behavioral changes such as apathy and disinhibition, stereotyped behaviors, and prominent dysfunction in executive and control functions, show a decline in both figural (Hart and Wade, 2006;De Souza et al, 2010;Ruggiero et al, 2019) and verbal (Rankin et al, 2007;De Souza et al, 2010;Paulin et al, 2020) DT. Hart and Wade Np DTT (Williams, 1994;Ruggiero et al, 2018).…”

Section: Ftd Behavioral Variantmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, authors suggested that proper functioning of the frontal poles supports DT, highlighting the role of topdown processes as pivotal for creative cognition. Accordingly, Ruggiero et al Ruggiero et al (2019), who evaluated a mixed FTD group (combining behavioral and semantic variants), suggested that poor creative abilities in these patients might be due to the alteration of the frontal lobes, which represent the main connection between the temporal and parietal lobes where knowledge and concepts are stored. Moreover, Paulin et al (2020) found that patients with the behavioral variant showed impaired verbal DT in terms of fluency, flexibility, and originality as compared with healthy controls.…”

Section: Figural Verbal (Only Title)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the study of patients with neurological diseases has brought great progress in the understanding of the neural substrates and cognitive processes involved in DT, there are still too few studies to draw any final conclusions and, even more importantly, some methodological and theoretical issues need to be addressed. Specifically, two out of five selected studies merged different groups of patients: Hart and Wade (2006) considered AD and FTD patients as a unique "dementia" group, whereas Ruggiero et al (2019) merged patients affected by the behavioral variant of FTD and patients with the semantic variant of PPA as a unique FTD group. Then, even studies focused on specific categories of patients, such as the semantic variant PPA (Paulin et al, 2020), used patients with different atrophy patterns (left/right side presentation).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Divergent Thinking Abilities in Frontotemporal Dementia: A Mini-Review

et al. 2021

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A large number of studies, including single case and case series studies, have shown that patients with different types of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are characterized by the emergence of artistic abilities. This led to the hypothesis of enhanced creative thinking skills as a function of these pathological conditions. However, in the last years, it has been argued that these brain pathologies lead only to an augmented “drive to produce” rather than to the emergence of creativity. Moreover, only a few studies analyzed specific creative skills, such as divergent thinking (DT), by standardized tests. This Mini-Review aimed to examine the extent to which DT abilities are preserved in patients affected by FTD. Results showed that DT abilities (both verbal and figural) are altered in different ways according to the specific anatomical and functional changes associated with the diverse forms of FTD. On the one hand, patients affected by the behavioral form of FTD can produce many ideas because of unimpaired access to memory stores (i.e., episodic and semantic), but are not able to recombine flexibly the information to produce original ideas because of damages in the pre-frontal cortex. On the other hand, patients affected by the semantic variant are impaired also in terms of fluency because of the degradation of their semantic memory store. Potential implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

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Section: Ftd Behavioral Variantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Figural Verbal (Only Title)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Divergent Thinking Abilities in Frontotemporal Dementia: A Mini-Review

et al. 2021

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“…As a result of this proven relationship, DT has been proposed as a possible target for cognitive stimulation interventions. Exercising divergent and creative thinking has been taken into consideration as a way to promote mental health and active aging by fostering creative cognition in daily life (Cropley, 1990), thereby reducing the risk of dementia (Palmiero et al, 2016), and also to try to slow down cognitive decline during neurodegenerative diseases (Palmiero et al, 2012;Ruggiero et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In spite of this significant evidence, few studies have evaluated DT abilities through standardized tests in patients affected by different types of dementia (Bigler et al, 1988;Bigler, 1995;Rankin et al, 2007;de Souza et al, 2010;Ruggiero et al, 2019) and studies focusing on DT in the early phases of the disease are even more scarce (Hart and Wade, 2006). Almost all of the studies highlighted a decline in DT abilities in this type of patient, even in the early stages (Hart and Wade, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications

et al. 2020

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Objective: Divergent thinking (DT) has attracted research interest because of its potential role in early diagnosis and rehabilitation programs for patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, DT has received even more attention because of its proven relationship with cognitive reserve (CR) and the possibility of a standardized assessment. However, few studies have investigated this ability in dementia patients, and even less is known about patients affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Thus, this study aims to investigate DT abilities in MCI patients. Methods: A total of 25 MCI patients and 25 healthy controls subjects (HC; from a random selection of 50) matched for age, gender, and educational level were enrolled. General cognitive functioning was measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), while the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) was selected to measure DT. Results: MANOVA analysis did not reveal any significant differences in DT abilities between MCI patients and HC except for the figural indicator score. A logistic hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the figural indicator score added an 8% of accuracy in the prediction of the group variable over the general cognition measure (MoCA). Conclusion: MCI patients seem to perform significantly worse than HC only in the figural DT score and this evidence has significant practical implications. First, that figural DT seemed to decrease even earlier than verbal DT and could therefore be taken into account for early diagnosis of MCI patients. On the contrary, the sparing of all the other DT skills (such as verbal DT skills, fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) may suggest that, given its relationship with CR, verbal DT could instead be considered a possible target for prevention or early cognitive stimulation interventions.

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Levodopa modulates semantic fluency and uniqueness in non‐demented patients with progressive supranuclear palsy

Ma,

Zhang,

Zhao

et al. 2024

Brain and Behavior

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IntroductionSemantic fluency is the ability to name items from a given category within a limited time, which relies on semantic knowledge, working memory, and executive function. Similar to patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) scored lower than healthy adults in the well‐established semantic fluency test. However, it is unclear how unique are the produced words. This study examined the relationship between semantic fluency and words’ uniqueness in patients with PSP.MethodsTwenty‐seven patients with PSP Richardson's syndrome (PSP‐RS), 37 patients with PD, and 41 healthy controls (HC) performed a standard semantic fluency test (animals), and their verbal responses were audio‐recorded. We used the uniqueness to reflect the ability to produce both original and effective work, that is, creativity.ResultsThe PSP‐RS group produced fewer correct words and fewer unique words than the PD and HC groups. Moreover, the correlation between fluency and uniqueness was positive in the HC and PD groups but negative in the PSP‐RS group. Importantly, the actual levodopa dose was positively correlated with the fluency but negatively correlated with the uniqueness in PSP‐RS. The PSP‐RS patients who took a greater dose of levodopa tended to produce more correct words but fewer unique words.ConclusionsThese results suggested that levodopa may modulate semantic fluency and uniqueness in the early stages of PSP‐RS.

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Do Neurodegenerative Diseases Affect Creativity? Divergent Thinking in Frontotemporal Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Divergent Thinking Abilities in Frontotemporal Dementia: A Mini-Review

Divergent Thinking Abilities in Frontotemporal Dementia: A Mini-Review

A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications

Levodopa modulates semantic fluency and uniqueness in non‐demented patients with progressive supranuclear palsy

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