Multimodal emotion processing deficits are present in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Abstract

These results indicate that people living with ALS without dementia often have subtle difficulties with recognizing emotions in both faces and voices, even in the context of intact basic cognition. Clinicians should be aware of the potential for these emotion processing difficulties to be present in ALS and to affect interpersonal behavior and quality of life. (PsycINFO Database Record

Deficits in Emotion Recognition as Markers of Frontal Behavioral Dysfunction in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

“…Even though it is well established that ALS patients have impairments in emotion recognition 1 , some studies in the field did not control for FTD-related behavioral symptoms 6,9,13 . Interestingly, after categorizing ALS patients into those with (ALSbs) or without (ALSns) frontal features, only the subgroup with coexisting behavioral impairment (ALSbs) was impaired in emotion recognition, as previously reported 7 .…”

“…However, it is not clear whether emotion recognition deficits in ALS occur in the absence of behavioral changes, as some of the previous studies in the field did not assess frontal behavioral symptoms with specific tools 6,9,13 . It remains open the issue whether emotion recognition deficits can occur independently of frontal behavioral syndrome in ALS.…”

Communication Matters—Pitfalls and Promise of Hightech Communication Devices in Palliative Care of Severely Physically Disabled Patients With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

“…Meta analyses report moderate deficits in facial emotion recognition for anger, sadness and disgust ( 132 ) and for disgust and surprise, respectively ( 67 )–an inconsistency that can probably be explained amongst others reasons by the heterogeneity of the used measures and of the clinical and cognitive features of the mainly small study samples. A recent study confirmed deficits of correct emotion recognition in face as well as in voice even for ALS-patients with otherwise unimpaired cognitive abilities, but particularly for complex emotion expressions ( 133 ). Irrespective of the specific (negative) emotions though, a lacking ability of identifying and consequently attributing them correctly and responding to them adequately can be considered to be very dissatisfying for patient and interlocutor, causing frustration and interpersonal conflicts; all aspects possibly affecting HT-AAC use and validity of QoL measures of locked-in patients which has not yet been studied.…”

“…Despite cognitive deficits–although not independent from them and often hard to distinguish ( 108 )–frontal lobe dysfunction is associated with various significant behavioral changes and neuropsychiatric symptoms in ALS, frequently disinhibition, mood disturbances, and in particular apathy ( 104 , 108 , 133 , 139 , 143 – 147 ). Regarding the issue of patient's motivation to communicate, studies by Lillo et al ( 124 , 143 ) for example found significant symptoms of apathy in ALS, particularly a crucially limited motivation in 80% and a significant apathy in about 40% of the 92 enrolled patients ( 143 ).…”

“…It can be moreover assumed that a lack of motivation up to apathy might especially affect communication by means of HT-AAC, regarding the high effort that is required for training and use of such devices for communication purposes, e.g., choosing every letter of a message via eye movement. Not surprisingly, apathy is strongly associated with caregiver burden ( 133 ).…”