Empathy and emotion recognition in semantic dementia: A case report

Abstract

a b s t r a c tRecent studies have demonstrated that patients suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) show impairments in empathy and emotional processing. In this study, we examined two different aspects of these abilities in a patient with semantic dementia (SD), a variant of FTLD. The first aspect was the assessment of the cognitive and emotional components of empathy through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The second was the naming and comprehension of emotions using the Ekman 60 Faces Test. The patient's emotion word knowledge was spared and the emotional aspects of empathy preserved. Conversely, the patient performed below average for all of the basic emotions when an emotion word had to be matched with a picture. When picture-to-picture matching was tested, however, the patient was able to recognize happiness. This case is a good example of a dissociation of covert and overt emotional functioning in SD. Results are discussed in terms of the impaired empathic behavior and emotional functioning in FTLD.

Perceptions of emotion from facial expressions are not culturally universal: Evidence from a remote culture.

“…In prior work, we demonstrated that experimentally decreasing the accessibility of emotion words’ semantic meaning, using a procedure called “semantic satiation”(Tian & Huber, 2010), reduces the accuracy with which participants produce the presumed universal pattern of emotion perception (Lindquist et al, 2006a) because words help to shape the underlying perceptual representation of those faces (Gendron et al, 2012). Our current findings are consistent with research on patients with semantic deficits due to progressive neurodegeneration (i.e., semantic dementia) or brain injury (i.e., semantic aphasia), who do not perceive emotions in scowls, pouts, smiles and so on (Calabria, Cotelli, Adenzato, Zanetti, & Miniussi, 2009; Roberson, Davidoff, & Braisby, 1999). Even research in young children points to the importance of emotion words in emotion perception, because the presumed universal pattern of emotion perception emerges in young children as they acquire conceptual categories, anchored by words, for emotions (Widen & Russell, 2010).…”

Behavioral and neural correlates of visual emotion discrimination and empathy in mild cognitive impairment

“…In a large-scale VBM study on neurodegenerative disorders [146], a similar neuroanatomical association with PT scores was found in the subgroup of patients affected by Semantic Dementia (SD). The correlation that we found between scores in PT and verbal comprehension deficits was also previously documented in a group of SD patients [147,148]. These combined results suggest that reduced cognitive empathy may be associated with deficits in semantic memory and linguistic comprehension, rather than empathic mechanisms of simulation [149].…”

Assessing Cognitive and Affective Empathy Through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index

“…However, if these factors are not present in the IRI, the measurement of cognitive and affective empathy in this study is likely not valid and any rehabilitation efforts inefficient and difficult to evaluate. The same holds true for other psychiatric illnesses that have been tied to empathy such as depression, sociopathy, and autism spectrum disorders (Bock & Hosser, 2014;Cusi et al, 2011;Samson, Huber, & Gross, 2012;Thoma et al, 2011), as well as studies attempting to link these empathic subprocesses to distinct brain systems (Calabria et al, 2009;Dziobek et al, 2011;Hooker et al, 2010;Shamay-Tsoory et al, 2004;Shamay-Tsoory et al, 2009). Because of the importance of empathy for several aspects of social life, reevaluating the use of the two-factor approach to the IRI as a valid measure of cognitive and affective empathy is critical to advance our understanding of this valuable psychological construct, as well as support the use of the IRI as it was originally intended and the development of behavioral and self-report measures that can accurately capture cognitive and affective empathy.…”