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Prolonged Visual Facial Grasp in Frontotemporal Dementia
Pongsatorn Paholpak1,2, Liang Li-Jung3, Drew R Carr1
1Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Journal of Alzheimer'S Disease : JAD
|May 11, 2016
Summary
Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) exhibit prolonged visual fixation on faces, distinguishing them from Alzheimer's patients. Both dementia groups showed increased attention to negative stimuli, impacting social interaction.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Social Cognition
- Dementia Research
Background:
- Gaze and eye contact are fundamental to social interaction.
- Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients may display abnormal prolonged staring at faces.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate social gaze characteristics in bvFTD patients.
- Compare gaze patterns in bvFTD patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease (eAD) and healthy controls (HC).
Main Methods:
- Presented 50 picture stimuli (faces/non-faces, varying valence) to bvFTD, eAD, and HC groups.
- Measured Visual Fixation Time (VFT) for facial stimuli using Facial Action Coding System.
- Employed linear mixed-effects regression to analyze VFT differences between groups.
Main Results:
- bvFTD patients showed significantly longer VFTs to faces than eAD patients and HC (p < 0.01).
- No VFT differences for non-facial stimuli between bvFTD and eAD.
- Both bvFTD and eAD groups had prolonged VFTs to negative non-facial stimuli compared to HC.
Conclusions:
- Prolonged facial gaze in bvFTD may underlie disturbed social interactions and aids in differential diagnosis.
- Both bvFTD and eAD groups demonstrated a tendency to fixate on negative stimuli, irrespective of whether they were faces or non-faces.
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