Premium
Affective disorders related to spect patterns in alzheimer's disease: A study of emotionalism
Author(s) -
Lebert Florence,
Pasquier Florence,
Steinling Marc,
Petit Henri
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.930090410
Subject(s) - crying , psychology , laterality , dementia , mood , psychiatry , degenerative disease , mood disorders , alzheimer's disease , disease , central nervous system disease , developmental psychology , neuroscience , medicine , anxiety
Mood disorder in dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) is heterogeneous in presentation. A typical feature is emotionalism, defined by Allman (1991) as 'a heightened tendency to cry (or rarely laugh) such that crying occurs more frequently, more easily, more vigorously, or in circumstances that previously would have been out of character'. Given the evidence for the involvement of cerebral laterality in the control of emotion, we investigated the relationship between emotionalism and 99m Tc‐HMPAO–SPECT patterns in 14 DAT patients. Right/left frontolateral asymmetry was significantly greater in the eight emotionalism‐positive patients than in the six emotionalism‐negative patients.