Impairment of prosocial sentiments is associated with frontopolar and septal damage in frontotemporal dementia.

Poets and philosophers have long acknowledged moral sentiments as key motivators of human social behavior. Prosocial sentiments, which include guilt, pity and embarrassment, enable us to care about others and to be concerned about our mistakes. Functional imaging studies have implicated frontopolar, ventromedial frontal and basal forebrain regions in the experience of prosocial sentiments.

Olfactory function in corticobasal syndrome and frontotemporal dementia.

Background: Formal olfactory testing may be useful as a bedside tool to help differentiate between conditions such as atypical parkinsonism, dementia, and psychiatric conditions. However, the neural basis of olfactory dysfunction, the effect of concurrent cognitive deficits on olfactory testing results, and the exact prevalence of olfactory deficits in populations with corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (FTD-FV) are to date unclear.

Objective: To assess the prevalence and the neural basis of olfactory recognition deficits in patients with a clinical diagnosis of CBS or FTD-FV.