Design and Implementation of a Clinical Science Specialty Clinic for Adults with Neurological Disorders and Their Caregivers.

Mental health problems are common for persons with neurological disorders (PWNDs) and their caregivers (CGs) but often are not adequately treated. Despite this growing need, the training of clinical psychologists typically does not include coursework or practicum experience working with these populations. To address this, a team of faculty, supervisors, and doctoral students in UC Berkeley's Clinical Science program undertook a year-long process that consisted of building a training curriculum that integrated coursework and consultation with visiting experts; providing supervised practicum training with PWNDs and CGs and evaluating training and clinical outcomes.

Empathic Accuracy and Shared Depressive Symptoms in Close Relationships.

Empathic accuracy, the ability to accurately understand others' emotions, is typically viewed as beneficial for mental health. However, empathic accuracy may be problematic when a close relational partner is depressed because it promotes shared depression. Across two studies, we measured empathic accuracy using laboratory tasks that capture the ability to rate others' emotional valence accurately over time: first, in a sample of 156 neurotypical married couples (Study 1; Total N=312), and then in a sample of 102 informal caregivers of individuals with dementia (Study 2).

Protecting endangered megafauna through AI analysis of drone images in a low-connectivity setting: a case study from Namibia.

Assessing the numbers and distribution of at-risk megafauna such as the black rhino () is key to effective conservation, yet such data are difficult to obtain. Many current monitoring technologies are invasive to the target animals and expensive. Satellite monitoring is emerging as a potential tool for very large animals (.

Right temporal degeneration and socioemotional semantics: semantic behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia.

Focal anterior temporal lobe degeneration often preferentially affects the left or right hemisphere. While patients with left-predominant anterior temporal lobe atrophy show severe anomia and verbal semantic deficits and meet criteria for semantic variant primary progressive aphasia and semantic dementia, patients with early right anterior temporal lobe atrophy are more difficult to diagnose as their symptoms are less well understood. Focal right anterior temporal lobe atrophy is associated with prominent emotional and behavioural changes, and patients often meet, or go on to meet, criteria for behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia.

Diminished preparatory physiological responses in frontotemporal lobar degeneration syndromes.

Researchers typically study physiological responses either after stimulus onset or when the emotional valence of an upcoming stimulus is revealed. Yet, participants may also respond when they are told that an emotional stimulus is about to be presented even without knowing its valence. Increased physiological responding during this time may reflect a 'preparation for action'.

Emotional and Cognitive Empathy in Caregivers of Persons with Neurodegenerative Disease: Relationships with Caregiver Mental Health.

Caregiving for a person with dementia or neurodegenerative disease (PWD) is associated with increased rates of depression and anxiety. As the population ages and dementia prevalence increases worldwide, mental health problems related to dementia caregiving will become an even more pressing public health concern. The present study assessed emotional empathy (physiological, behavioral, and self-reported emotional responses to a film depicting others suffering) and two measures of cognitive empathy (identifying the primary emotion experienced by another person; providing continuous ratings of the valence of another person's changing emotions) in relation to mental health (standard questionnaires) in 78 caregivers of PWDs.

Smaller Volume in Left-Lateralized Brain Structures Correlates with Greater Experience of Negative Non-target Emotions in Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Subjective emotional experience that is congruent with a given situation (i.e., target emotions) is critical for human survival (e.

Comparing two facets of emotion perception across multiple neurodegenerative diseases.

Deficits in emotion perception (the ability to infer others' emotions accurately) can occur as a result of neurodegeneration. It remains unclear how different neurodegenerative diseases affect different forms of emotion perception. The present study compares performance on a dynamic tracking task of emotion perception (where participants track the changing valence of a film character's emotions) with performance on an emotion category labeling task (where participants label specific emotions portrayed by film characters) across seven diagnostic groups (N = 178) including Alzheimer's disease (AD), behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal syndrome and healthy controls.

Poor Disgust Suppression Is Associated with Increased Anxiety in Caregivers of People with Neurodegenerative Disease.

Objectives: Caregivers of persons with neurodegenerative disease have high rates of mental health problems compared to noncaregiving adults. Emotion regulation may play an important role in preserving caregivers' mental health. We examined the associations between caregivers' emotion regulation measured in several ways (ability, habitual use, and self-ratings) and their mental health symptoms.

Emotion Recognition and Reactivity in Persons With Neurodegenerative Disease Are Differentially Associated With Caregiver Health.

Background And Objectives: Motivated by the high rates of health problems found among caregivers of persons with neurodegenerative disease, we examined associations between deficits in two aspects of care recipients' socioemotional functioning and their caregivers' health.

Research Design And Methods: In 2 studies with independent samples (N = 171 and 73 dyads), caregivers reported on care recipients' emotion recognition and emotional reactivity. Caregiver health was assessed using both self-report measures (Studies 1 and 2) and autonomic nervous system indices (Study 2).

Physiological, behavioral and subjective sadness reactivity in frontotemporal dementia subtypes.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a neurodegenerative disease broadly characterized by socioemotional impairments, includes three clinical subtypes: behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA). Emerging evidence has shown emotional reactivity impairments in bvFTD and svPPA, whereas emotional reactivity in nfvPPA is far less studied. In 105 patients with FTD (49 bvFTD, 31 svPPA and 25 nfvPPA) and 27 healthy controls, we examined three aspects of emotional reactivity (physiology, facial behavior and subjective experience) in response to a sad film.

Neurodegenerative Disease Caregivers' 5-HTTLPR Genotype Moderates the Effect of Patients' Empathic Accuracy Deficits on Caregivers' Well-Being.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that a functional polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene (serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region [5-HTTLPR]), which is thought to be associated with differential environmental sensitivity, moderates the association between low levels of empathic accuracy (i.e., ability to recognize emotions in others) in patients with neurodegenerative disease and caregivers' well-being.

Evaluating Patient Brain and Behavior Pathways to Caregiver Health in Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Background: Caregivers of patients with neurodegenerative diseases are at heightened risk for serious health problems, but health differences between individual caregivers abound.

Aims: To determine whether atrophy in patient brains could be used to identify caregivers at heightened risk for health problems and which patient variables mediate this relationship.

Methods: In 162 patient-caregiver dyads, we assessed patient atrophy using structural MRI, caregiver health, and patient behavior and cognitive symptoms.

Resting parasympathetic dysfunction predicts prosocial helping deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.

In the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), left-lateralized salience network dysfunction reduces basal activity in the parasympathetic nervous system, a branch of the autonomic nervous system that reduces arousal and fosters empathy and prosociality. Here we examined whether resting parasympathetic deficits in bvFTD related to diminished prosocial behavior. Eighty participants [30 with bvFTD, 25 with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 25 healthy controls] completed a "helping task" in which we quantified participants' spontaneous reactions to an experimenter who struggled to find a lost key.

Early affective changes and increased connectivity in preclinical Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: Affective changes precede cognitive decline in mild Alzheimer's disease and may relate to increased connectivity in a "salience network" attuned to emotionally significant stimuli. The trajectory of affective changes in preclinical Alzheimer's disease, and its relationship to this network, is unknown.

Methods: One hundred one cognitively normal older adults received longitudinal assessments of affective symptoms, then amyloid-PET.

Network Architecture Underlying Basal Autonomic Outflow: Evidence from Frontotemporal Dementia.

The salience network is a distributed neural system that maintains homeostasis by regulating autonomic nervous system activity and social-emotional function. Here we examined how within-network connectivity relates to individual differences in human (including males and females) baseline parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous activity. We measured resting autonomic nervous system physiology in 24 healthy controls and 23 patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by baseline autonomic deficits.

Enhanced Positive Emotional Reactivity Undermines Empathy in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia.

Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by profound changes in emotions and empathy. Although most patients with bvFTD become less sensitive to negative emotional cues, some patients become more sensitive to positive emotional stimuli. We investigated whether dysregulated positive emotions in bvFTD undermine empathy by making it difficult for patients to share (emotional empathy), recognize (cognitive empathy), and respond (real-world empathy) to emotions in others.

Increased subjective experience of non-target emotions in patients with frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Although laboratory procedures are designed to produce specific emotions, participants often experience mixed emotions (i.e., target and non-target emotions).

Early vs late age at onset frontotemporal dementia and frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

Objective: To examine clinicopathologic correlations in early vs late age at onset frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD).

Methods: All patients were clinically evaluated and prospectively diagnosed at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Two consecutive series were included: (1) patients with a clinically diagnosed FTD syndrome who underwent autopsy (cohort 1) and (2) patients with a primary pathologic diagnosis of FTLD, regardless of the clinical syndrome (cohort 2).

Prosocial deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia relate to reward network atrophy.

Introduction: Empathy and shared feelings of reward motivate individuals to share resources with others when material gain is not at stake. Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects emotion- and reward-relevant neural systems. Although there is diminished empathy and altered reward processing in bvFTD, how the disease impacts prosocial behavior is less well understood.

Advancing functional dysconnectivity and atrophy in progressive supranuclear palsy.

Progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome (PSP-S) results from neurodegeneration within a network of brainstem, subcortical, frontal and parietal cortical brain regions. It is unclear how network dysfunction progresses and relates to longitudinal atrophy and clinical decline. In this study, we evaluated patients with PSP-S (n = 12) and healthy control subjects (n = 20) at baseline and 6 months later.

Dominant hemisphere lateralization of cortical parasympathetic control as revealed by frontotemporal dementia.

The brain continuously influences and perceives the physiological condition of the body. Related cortical representations have been proposed to shape emotional experience and guide behavior. Although previous studies have identified brain regions recruited during autonomic processing, neurological lesion studies have yet to delineate the regions critical for maintaining autonomic outflow.