Impaired self-conscious emotion ratings in frontotemporal dementia

Abstract

Impaired self-conscious emotion ratings in frontotemporal dementiaPatients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) have impairments in the selfconscious emotions that guide social behavior (Sturm et al., 2006(Sturm et al., , 2008). Among early-onset dementias, bvFTD is second only to Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia and one frequently confused with bvFTD. The absence of self-conscious emotions can help in distinguishing bvFTD from AD and other conditions on initial presentation. Patients with bvFTD, however, lack emotional insight (Mendez and Shapira, 2011), and their self-reports of emotions may not be reliable. This pilot study investigates the value of caregiver ratings of self-conscious emotions vs. a self-report scale of ease of embarrassment in patients with bvFTD compared to those with AD. It further validates these assessments with skin conduction responses (SCRs) to an embarrassing event.