Comprehension of emotions: comparison between Alzheimer type and vascular type dementias

This study investigated the ability of recognizing emotion in dementia. Twenty-five patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), 25 patients with vascular dementia (VD), and 12 normal control subjects were evaluated as to general cognition, visuoperception and emotion recognition. The score on the emotion recognition task significantly correlated with that of the Mini-Mental State Examination for VD patients while this was not the case for DAT patients. Moreover, VD patients performed significantly worse than DAT patients on the emotion recognition task in spite of the fact that there was no difference in the general cognitive and visuoperceptual abilities between them. The result of this study coupled with the past studies led to the hypothesis that the relationship between intellectual deficits and the deterioration in recognizing emotions differs according to type of dementia. Caregivers in nursing homes and hospitals need to take into account their patients' intellectual deficits but also their deteriorating ability of identifying emotions.