title: Meta-Analysis of Facial Emotion Recognition in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia: Comparison With Alzheimer Disease and Healthy Controls.
abstract: Behavioral disturbances and lack of empathy are distinctive clinical features of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) in comparison to Alzheimer disease (AD). The aim of this meta-analytic review was to compare facial emotion recognition performances of bvFTD with healthy controls and AD. The current meta-analysis included a total of 19 studies and involved comparisons of 288 individuals with bvFTD and 329 healthy controls and 162 bvFTD and 147 patients with AD. Facial emotion recognition was significantly impaired in bvFTD in comparison to the healthy controls (d = 1.81) and AD (d = 1.23). In bvFTD, recognition of negative emotions, especially anger (d = 1.48) and disgust (d = 1.41), were severely impaired. Emotion recognition was significantly impaired in bvFTD in comparison to AD in all emotions other than happiness. Impairment of emotion recognition is a relatively specific feature of bvFTD. Routine assessment of social-cognitive abilities including emotion recognition can be helpful in better differentiating between cortical dementias such as bvFTD and AD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria, Australia boremre@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Emre
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bora
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria, Australia Neuropsychiatry Unit, ROYAL MELBOURNE Hospital, VIC, Australia.
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Velakoulis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria, Australia Neuropsychiatry Unit, ROYAL MELBOURNE Hospital, VIC, Australia.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walterfang
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D057180:Frontotemporal Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Alzheimer disease; emotion recognition; frontotemporal dementia; social cognition