Altered Sense of Humor in Dementia

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Sense of humor is potentially relevant to social functioning in dementias, but has been little studied in these diseases. We designed a semi-structured informant questionnaire to assess humor behavior and preferences in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 15), semantic dementia (SD; n = 7), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA; n = 10), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD; n = 16) versus healthy age-matched individuals ( n = 21). Altered (including frankly inappropriate) humor responses were significantly more frequent in bvFTD and SD (all patients) than PNFA or AD (around 40% of patients). All patient groups liked satirical and absurdist comedy significantly less than did healthy controls. This pattern was reported premorbidly for satirical comedy in bvFTD, PNFA, and AD. Liking for slapstick comedy did not differ between groups. Altered sense of humor is particularly salient in bvFTD and SD, but also frequent in AD and PNFA. Humor may be a sensitive probe of social cognitive impairment in dementia, with diagnostic, biomarker and social implications.

Related collections

Most cited references 23

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

"Mini-mental state". A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician.

M F Folstein, S Folstein, P R McHugh (1975)

0 comments Cited 3560 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Sensitivity of revised diagnostic criteria for the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia.

Katya Rascovsky, John R. Hodges, David Knopman … (2011)

Based on the recent literature and collective experience, an international consortium developed revised guidelines for the diagnosis of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. The validation process retrospectively reviewed clinical records and compared the sensitivity of proposed and earlier criteria in a multi-site sample of patients with pathologically verified frontotemporal lobar degeneration. According to the revised criteria, 'possible' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia requires three of six clinically discriminating features (disinhibition, apathy/inertia, loss of sympathy/empathy, perseverative/compulsive behaviours, hyperorality and dysexecutive neuropsychological profile). 'Probable' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia adds functional disability and characteristic neuroimaging, while behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia 'with definite frontotemporal lobar degeneration' requires histopathological confirmation or a pathogenic mutation. Sixteen brain banks contributed cases meeting histopathological criteria for frontotemporal lobar degeneration and a clinical diagnosis of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies or vascular dementia at presentation. Cases with predominant primary progressive aphasia or extra-pyramidal syndromes were excluded. In these autopsy-confirmed cases, an experienced neurologist or psychiatrist ascertained clinical features necessary for making a diagnosis according to previous and proposed criteria at presentation. Of 137 cases where features were available for both proposed and previously established criteria, 118 (86%) met 'possible' criteria, and 104 (76%) met criteria for 'probable' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. In contrast, 72 cases (53%) met previously established criteria for the syndrome (P < 0.001 for comparison with 'possible' and 'probable' criteria). Patients who failed to meet revised criteria were significantly older and most had atypical presentations with marked memory impairment. In conclusion, the revised criteria for behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia improve diagnostic accuracy compared with previously established criteria in a sample with known frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Greater sensitivity of the proposed criteria may reflect the optimized diagnostic features, less restrictive exclusion features and a flexible structure that accommodates different initial clinical presentations. Future studies will be needed to establish the reliability and specificity of these revised diagnostic guidelines.

0 comments Cited 999 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants

M L Gorno-Tempini, A E Hillis, S Weintraub … (2011)

This article provides a classification of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and its 3 main variants to improve the uniformity of case reporting and the reliability of research results. Criteria for the 3 variants of PPA--nonfluent/agrammatic, semantic, and logopenic--were developed by an international group of PPA investigators who convened on 3 occasions to operationalize earlier published clinical descriptions for PPA subtypes. Patients are first diagnosed with PPA and are then divided into clinical variants based on specific speech and language features characteristic of each subtype. Classification can then be further specified as "imaging-supported" if the expected pattern of atrophy is found and "with definite pathology" if pathologic or genetic data are available. The working recommendations are presented in lists of features, and suggested assessment tasks are also provided. These recommendations have been widely agreed upon by a large group of experts and should be used to ensure consistency of PPA classification in future studies. Future collaborations will collect prospective data to identify relationships between each of these syndromes and specific biomarkers for a more detailed understanding of clinicopathologic correlations.

0 comments Cited 895 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Alzheimers Dis

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J. Alzheimers Dis

Journal ID (publisher-id): JAD

Title: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

Publisher: IOS Press (Nieuwe Hemweg 6B, 1013 BG Amsterdam, The Netherlands )

ISSN (Print): 1387-2877

ISSN (Electronic): 1875-8908

Publication date (Electronic, pub): 24 September 2015

Publication date (Electronic, collection): 2016

Volume: 49

Issue: 1

Pages: 111-119

Affiliations

[a ]Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London , UK

[b ]London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London , London, UK

Author notes

[* ]Correspondence to: Prof Jason Warren, Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, 8 – 11 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK. Tel.: +44 0203 448 4773; Fax: +44 0203 448 3104; E-mail: jason.warren@ 123456ucl.ac.uk

Article

Publisher ID: JAD150413

DOI: 10.3233/JAD-150413

PMC ID: 4820649

PubMed ID: 26444779

SO-VID: 50b4a860-7c0a-4a53-b9f4-f3e292a2e538

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Altered Sense of Humor in Dementia

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

UCL: UN SDG 03 Good Health and Well-Being

Most cited references 23

"Mini-mental state". A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician.

Sensitivity of revised diagnostic criteria for the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia.

Classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants

Author and article information

Journal

Affiliations

Author notes

Article

History

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 344

Cited by 15

Most referenced authors 666