Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are two common forms of dementia, both of which present significant problems in clinical diagnosis and patient management. In the early stages of FTLD, many of the symptoms are behavioral, including changes in emotional behavior, social behavior, and personality. These behavioral symptoms have not been well-specified, and thus FTLD often goes unrecognized or misdiagnosed. In the early stages of AD, cognitive changes (e.g, memory loss) are most prominent, but changes in socio-emotional behavior and personality may develop later. As with FTLD, tools for precisely assessing these socio-emotional and personality changes in AD are lacking. We propose to evaluate the utility of applying methods developed in basic behavioral research to achieve a more comprehensive assessment of emotion, social behavior, and personality in these two clinical syndromes. This assessment will measure: (a) actual emotional behavior as it occurs (as opposed to solely relying on retrospective reports); (b) major emotional functions, including emotional reactivity, emotional regulation, and emotional knowledge; (c) major classes of emotion, including negative emotions, positive emotions, and self-conscious emotions; (d) different contexts in which emotions occur, including when the person is alone and responding to wellspecified stimuli and when the person is in meaningful social contexts (e.g., interacting with a loved one); (e) multiple indicators of emotion, including subjective experience, expressive behavior, and autonomic nervous system physiology; (f) changes in emotional functioning that occur over time; and (g) changes in personality. The research addresses four specific aims: (a) to use methods derived from basic behavioral research to evaluate changes in emotional reactivity, emotional regulation, emotional knowledge, and personality in FTLD and AD; (b) to evaluate the relationship that purported genetic markers of FTLD have with emotional behavior and personality in families with a positive history of FTLD; (c) to evaluate relationships between specific regions of brain degeneration and attendant changes in emotional behavior; and (d) to evaluate changes in socio-emotional behavior in FTLD and AD patients by studying dyadic interaction with spouses. Delineating socio-emotional and personality changes in dementia can contribute to more accurate, earlier diagnosis; to identifying important subtypes of these disorders; and to helping us better deal with the profound impact that these disorders have on the lives of patients and their families.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Program Projects (P01)
Project #
1P01AG019724-01A1
Application #
6481368
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZAG1-FAS-5 (J3))
Project Start
2002-04-01
Project End
2007-03-31
Budget Start
Budget End
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$199,712
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California San Francisco
Department
Type
DUNS #
073133571
City
San Francisco
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
94143
Kim, Eun-Joo; Brown, Jesse A; Deng, Jersey et al. (2018) Mixed TDP-43 proteinopathy and tauopathy in frontotemporal lobar degeneration: nine case series. J Neurol 265:2960-2971
Henry, Maya L; Hubbard, H Isabel; Grasso, Stephanie M et al. (2018) Retraining speech production and fluency in non-fluent/agrammatic primary progressive aphasia. Brain 141:1799-1814
Nana, Alissa L; Sidhu, Manu; Gaus, Stephanie E et al. (2018) Neurons selectively targeted in frontotemporal dementia reveal early stage TDP-43 pathobiology. Acta Neuropathol :
Vatsavayai, Sarat C; Nana, Alissa L; Yokoyama, Jennifer S et al. (2018) C9orf72-FTD/ALS pathogenesis: evidence from human neuropathological studies. Acta Neuropathol :
Ossenkoppele, Rik; Rabinovici, Gil D; Smith, Ruben et al. (2018) Discriminative Accuracy of [18F]flortaucipir Positron Emission Tomography for Alzheimer Disease vs Other Neurodegenerative Disorders. JAMA 320:1151-1162
Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Welch, Ariane E; Vilaplana, Eduard et al. (2018) Altered topology of the functional speech production network in non-fluent/agrammatic variant of PPA. Cortex 108:252-264
Pressman, Peter S; Shdo, Suzanne; Simpson, Michaela et al. (2018) Neuroanatomy of Shared Conversational Laughter in Neurodegenerative Disease. Front Neurol 9:464
Caverzasi, Eduardo; Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Hoeft, Fumiko et al. (2018) Abnormal age-related cortical folding and neurite morphology in children with developmental dyslexia. Neuroimage Clin 18:814-821
Toller, Gianina; Brown, Jesse; Sollberger, Marc et al. (2018) Individual differences in socioemotional sensitivity are an index of salience network function. Cortex 103:211-223
Caplan, Alyssa; Marx, Gabe; Elofson, Jonathan et al. (2018) A case of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia with Pick's pathology. Neurocase 24:90-94

Showing the most recent 10 out of 607 publications