A paleo-neurologic investigation of the social brain hypothesis in frontotemporal dementia.

The social brain hypothesis posits that a disproportionate encephalization in primates enabled to adapt behavior to a social context. Also, it has been proposed that phylogenetically recent brain areas are disproportionally affected by neurodegeneration. Using structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study investigates brain-behavior associations and neural integrity of hyperspecialized and domain-general cortical social brain areas in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).

Network level characteristics in the emotion recognition network after unilateral temporal lobe surgery.

The human amygdala is considered a key region for successful emotion recognition. We recently reported that temporal lobe surgery (TLS), including resection of the amygdala, does not affect emotion recognition performance (Journal of Neuroscience, 2018, 38, 9263). In the present study, we investigate the neural basis of this preserved function at the network level.

Regional changes in the type 1 cannabinoid receptor are associated with cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.

Purpose: The endocannabinoid system plays a regulatory role in a number of physiological functions, including motor control but also mood, emotion, and cognition. A number of preclinical studies in Parkinson's disease (PD) models demonstrated that modulating the type 1 cannabinoid receptor (CBR) may improve motor symptoms and components of cognitive processing. However, the relation between CBR, cognitive decline and behavioral symptoms has not been investigated in PD patients so far.

Reduced tendency to attribute mental states to abstract shapes in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia links with cerebellar structural integrity.

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to attribute mental states to others. Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by profound deficits in social cognition, including ToM. We investigate whether bvFTD affects intention attribution tendency while viewing abstract animations and whether this might represent a primary deficit.

Anterior Temporal Lobectomy Impairs Neural Classification of Body Emotions in Right Superior Temporal Sulcus and Reduces Emotional Enhancement in Distributed Brain Areas without Affecting Behavioral Classification.

Humans with amygdalar lesions show proportional reductions of the emotional response to facial expressions in the fusiform face area as well as deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions. While processing of bodily expressions shares many similarities with facial expressions, there is no substantial evidence that lesions of the amygdala result in similar behavioral and neural sequelae. We combined behavioral assessment with functional neuroimaging in a group of male and female humans with unilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) resections, including the amygdala (right: = 10; left: = 10) and 12 matched controls.

Behavioral Symptoms in Premanifest Huntington Disease Correlate with Reduced Frontal CBR Levels.

Many Huntington disease (HD) mutation carriers already have cognitive and psychiatric symptoms in the premanifest (premotor) phase of the disease (pre-HD), but the molecular underpinnings of these symptoms are not well understood. Previous work has shown reduced availability of the cerebral type 1 cannabinoid receptor (CBR) in manifest HD. Here, we investigated whether CBR binding is related to cognitive and psychiatric symptoms in pre-HD mutation carriers.

Studying emotion theories through connectivity analysis: Evidence from generalized psychophysiological interactions and graph theory.

Psychological construction models of emotion state that emotions are variable concepts constructed by fundamental psychological processes, whereas according to basic emotion theory, emotions cannot be divided into more fundamental units and each basic emotion is represented by a unique and innate neural circuitry. In a previous study, we found evidence for the psychological construction account by showing that several brain regions were commonly activated when perceiving different emotions (i.e.

Face shape and face identity processing in behavioral variant fronto-temporal dementia: A specific deficit for familiarity and name recognition of famous faces.

Deficits in face processing have been described in the behavioral variant of fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD), primarily regarding the recognition of facial expressions. Less is known about face shape and face identity processing. Here we used a hierarchical strategy targeting face shape and face identity recognition in bvFTD and matched healthy controls.