Premium
[P1–472]: EVALUATING DISTINCT COMPONENTS OF EMPATHIC BEHAVIOUR IN FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA
Author(s) -
Russell Lucy L.,
Gordon Elizabeth,
Bond Rebecca L.,
Hardy Chris J.D.,
Marshall Charles R.,
Woollacott Ione O.C.,
Bocchetta Martina,
Dick Katrina M.,
Warren Jason D.,
Rohrer Jonathan D.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2017.06.488
Subject(s) - frontotemporal dementia , primary progressive aphasia , interpersonal reactivity index , empathy , psychology , audiology , clinical psychology , dementia , medicine , psychiatry , disease , perspective taking
patterns of activation. This process is critical for accurate encoding and subsequent retrieval of verbal and non-verbal (spatial) information. We aimed to examine spatial pattern separation capacity and a role of varying degrees of spatial interference in early AD.Methods: In all, 98 subjects: amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) due to AD (n 1⁄4 44) and mild AD dementia (n 1⁄4 31) with high and intermediate biomarker probability of AD etiology, together with cognitively normal (CN) older adults (n 1⁄4 23) underwent clinical and neuropsychological evaluation, MRI brain scan and spatial pattern separation task examination. The subjects were asked to remember the location of a circle on a computer screen and indicate, after 10 or 20 second delay, which of the two simultaneously displayed circles was in the same location as the presented circle. Four spatial separations between two circles were used: 0, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 cm. A 3x2x4 mixed model analysis of variance was used to analyze the number of correct responses. Results: Spatial pattern separation was less efficient in AD subjects (CN vs. aMCI and CN vs. dementia, ps<.001) and further decreased with AD severity (aMCI vs. dementia, p<.001). There was a linear effect of spatial separation (p<.001) indicating that, on average, accuracy of performance decreased as spatial separation decreased. The delay between presentation and testing phases had no effect on the performance. None of the interactions in the model were significant indicating similar effects of spatial separation on the performance regardless of diagnosis and delay between presentation and testing. Conclusions: Spatial pattern separation becomes less efficient in early AD. Efficient spatial pattern separation mechanisms are required to orthogonalize spatial input and create distinct representations especially when the distance between spatial stimuli is decreased (e.g. the interference is increased). This may have important implications for designing highly sensitive behavioral tasks that measure specific mnemonic processes, which reflect functions of hippocampal subregions affected early in AD.