title: Social cognition, executive functioning, and neuroimaging correlates of empathic deficits in frontotemporal dementia.
abstract: The authors investigated aspects of interpersonal sensitivity and perspective-taking in relation to empathy, social cognitions, and executive functioning in 26 frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients. Behavioral-variant FTD (bvFTD) patients were significantly impaired on caregiver assessments of empathy, although self-ratings were normal. Progressive nonfluent aphasia and semantic-dementia samples were rarely abnormal. In bvFTD, empathy ratings were found to be correlated with social cognition and executive functioning measures, but not depression. Voxel-based morphometry revealed that reduced empathic perspective-taking was related to bifrontal and left anterior temporal atrophy, whereas empathic emotions were related to right medial frontal atrophy. Findings suggest that bvFTD causes multiple types of breakdown in empathy, social cognition, and executive resources, mediated by frontal and temporal disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, EC037, PA State Hershey Medical Center, P.O. Box 850, Hershey, PA 17033-0850, USA. peslinger@psu.edu
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Eslinger
authors.forename: Peachie
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Chivon
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Murray
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grossman
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology; D057180:Frontotemporal Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012919:Social Behavior