Céline Borg

How Emotional Pictures Influence Visuospatial Binding in Short-Term Memory in Ageing and Alzheimer's Disease?.

The present study examines the prediction that emotion can facilitate short-term memory. Nevertheless, emotion also recruits attention to process information, thereby disrupting short-term memory when tasks involve high attentional resources. In this way, we aimed to determine whether there is a differential influence of emotional information on short-term memory in ageing and Alzheimers disease (AD). Fourteen patients with mild AD, 14 healthy older participants (NC), and 14 younger adults (YA) performed two tasks. In the first task, involving visual short-term memory, participants were asked to remember a picture among four different pictures (negative or neutral) following a brief delay. The second task, a binding memory task, required the recognition by participants of a picture according to its spatial location. The attentional cost involved was higher than for the first task. The pattern of results showed that visual memory performance was better for negative stimuli than for neutral ones, irrespective of the group. In contrast, binding memory performance was essentially poorer for the location of negative pictures in the NC group, and for the location of both negative and neutral stimuli in the AD group, in comparison to the YA group. Taken together, these results show that emotion has beneficial effects on visual short-term memory in ageing and AD. In contrast, emotion does not improve their performances in the binding condition.

De novo artistic activity following insular–SII ischemia

&NA; We report here the case of a female patient who developed the following behavioural changes after a brain lesion involving the left posterior insula and SII cortices. She discovered de novo artistic capabilities for painting, with an episodic and compulsive need to paint (“hyperpainting”), but also exhibited changes in her ability to feel emotions. In addition, she had a typical neuropathic pain syndrome, including provoked pain and spontaneous pain, whose intensity was worsened when she painted with cold colours. This case‐report suggests some kind of synaesthesiae, which has previously been reported for other sensory modalities. These findings suggest that a cross‐talk between emotional, thermosensory, pain, and motivational functions may take place during recovery, at the level of the left insular–SII cortices.

Visual Imagery Processing and Knowledge of Famous Names in Alzheimer's Disease and MCI

ABSTRACT The study of memory for famous people and visual imagery retrieval was investigated in patients in the early stages of Alzheimers disease (AD) and in the prodromal stage of AD, so-called Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Fifteen patients with AD (MMSE ≥23), 15 patients with amnestic MCI (a-MCI) and 15 normal controls (NC) performed a famous names test designed to evaluate the semantic and distinctive physical features knowledge of famous persons. Results indicated that patients with AD and a-MCI generated significantly less physical features and semantic biographical knowledge about famous persons than did normal control participants. Additionally, significant differences were observed between a-MCI and AD patients in all tasks. The present findings confirm recent studies reporting semantic memory impairment in MCI. Moreover, the current findings show that mental imagery is lowered in a-MCI and AD and is likely related to the early semantic impairment.

Impaired emotional processing in a patient with a left posterior insula-SII lesion

The present case-report investigated the influence of a lesion in the left posterior insula-SII cortices on the processing of emotions. MB and 16 normal controls explicitly rated the valence and the intensity of both facial expressions and emotional words. In addition, they had to perform a number comparison task and a lexical decision task without focusing their attention on emotional components of stimuli. MB identified the valence of emotional words as well as the control group. Nevertheless, she provided higher intensity scores for disgusted words and her responses in the lexical decision task were significantly delayed for these stimuli. In addition, MB’s response times were not differently influenced by the presence of irrelevant emotional faces. However, she explicitly identified fewer facial expressions of disgust and she assessed them as significantly less intense. This pattern of results contributes to highlight the psychological and behavioral disorders observed after a left posterior insular stroke.

Évaluation de la mémoire des événements publics : apport de la batterie EVE-30 chez 108 témoins, chez 10 patients MCI et 10 patients Alzheimer

Resume Introduction La memoire des evenements publics est un des secteurs les plus explores de la memoire collective. Methodes La batterie EVE-30 est la forme revisee de la batterie EVE, seule batterie en langue francaise permettant d’explorer le souvenir des evenements publics, elaboree dans les annees 1990. Elle comporte 30 evenements survenus depuis 1920, presentes verbalement. Les sujets doivent evoquer les evenements, les identifier en choix multiple, repondre a deux questions de details les concernant et les situer dans le temps. Elle permet en plus de controler une eventuelle reexposition des evenements et de rechercher l’existence de souvenirs flashs. La batterie a ete realisee chez 108 temoins âges de 20 a 79 ans, chez 10 patients Alzheimer (MA) et chez 10 patients presentant un trouble cognitif leger amnesique (MCI). Resultats La batterie est globalement bien reussie par les temoins avec un taux moyen de bonnes reponses de 72 p. 100. Les reponses sont hierarchisees dans tous les groupes. La reconnaissance est respectivement mieux reussie que l’evocation, la datation et les questions. On observe chez les temoins, un effet significatif de l’âge en faveur des plus âges et du niveau culturel en faveur des niveaux les plus eduques. Les patients MCI et MA ont des performances moindres que les temoins et ne se distinguent pas dans les epreuves de reconnaissance et de questions (scores effondres dans les deux groupes). La batterie realisable en une heure nous parait pouvoir etre recommandee dans la pratique neuropsychologique clinique.

Fear recognition impairment in early-stage Alzheimer's disease: when focusing on the eyes region improves performance.

A decline in the ability to identify fearful expression has been frequently reported in patients with Alzheimers disease (AD). In patients with severe destruction of the bilateral amygdala, similar difficulties have been reduced by using an explicit visual exploration strategy focusing on gaze. The current study assessed the possibility of applying a similar strategy in AD patients to improve fear recognition. It also assessed the possibility of improving fear recognition when a visual exploration strategy induced AD patients to process the eyes region. Seventeen patients with mild AD and 34 healthy subjects (17 young adults and 17 older adults) performed a classical task of emotional identification of faces expressing happiness, anger, and fear in two conditions: The face appeared progressively from the eyes region to the periphery (eyes region condition) or it appeared as a whole (global condition). Specific impairment in identifying a fearful expression was shown in AD patients compared with older adult controls during the global condition. Fear expression recognition was significantly improved in AD patients during the eyes region condition, in which they performed similarly to older adult controls. Our results suggest that using a different strategy of face exploration, starting first with processing of the eyes region, may compensate for a fear recognition deficit in AD patients. Findings suggest that a part of this deficit could be related to visuo-perceptual impairments. Additionally, these findings suggest that the decline of fearful face recognition reported in both normal aging and in AD may result from impairment of non-amygdalar processing in both groups and impairment of amygdalar-dependent processing in AD.

Emergence of hyper empathy after right amygdalohippocampectomy

We report a fascinating case of a patient with a hyper empathy that appeared after resective epilepsy surgery. This behavioral modification has remained unchanged since the surgery took place 13 years ago. Recent neuropsychological objective assessments confirmed hyper empathy in a self-report questionnaire, and revealed higher affective theory of mind than controls in a “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task.” Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common form of epilepsy and the investigation of emotional processes after surgery in these patients deserves to be related.

Implicit and explicit emotional processing in Parkinson's disease

Introduction: Our study investigated the ability of nondemented Parkinsons disease (PD) patients to explicitly identify emotional words and to show implicit sensitivity to these emotions in a task that did not require emotional processing. Methods: Twelve PD patients and 12 healthy controls, matched for age and education, performed lexical decision (LD) and emotional categorisation tasks (fear, disgust, and happiness) on the same words. Results: PD patients were specifically impaired in the explicit identification of disgust with a decreased accuracy in LD. However, a slowdown in LD latency in both PD patients and the control group suggested the persistence of emotional sensitivity to disgust. Conclusion: Despite the persistence of an automatic capture by the emotional content of disgust, PD patients may suffer from emotional deficits in recognising both the emotional and semantic components of words, resulting in blunted emotional responses.

Attentional focus on subjective interoceptive experience in patients with fibromyalgia.

OBJECTIVES The hypervigilance model of pain perception states that patients with fibromyalgia (FM) have an enhanced sensitivity to aversive and non-aversive stimuli. Few studies have focused on enhanced interoceptive sensitivity in FM. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate spontaneous sensations (SPS) in FM. DESIGN SPS are those tingling, tickly and other kind of sensations usually perceived on the skin during periods of rest and without any external trigger. Therefore, we have investigated SPS by requiring participants to focus attention on each hand. METHODS Eighteen patients with a diagnosis of FM and 18 matched healthy participants had to direct their gaze toward the hand tested for a period of 10s. Subsequently, they had to map and report the intensity, the number and the qualitative properties of sensations arising spontaneously. Finally, participants had to fill out questionnaires assessing cognitive and affective status that may influence the interoceptive sensations feedback. RESULTS Patients with FM perceived SPS as significantly more intense than controls did. Additionally, SPS were perceived by the FM group as occupying an overall larger area on the hand than those reported by controls. Importantly, entering scores of pain and catastrophism as covariates produced a relative effect on the feeling of SPS. CONCLUSIONS The outcome of this study supports the generalized hypervigilance model, suggesting that patients with FM have a perceptual style of amplification of non-aversive interoceptive stimulation, modulated by pain and catastrophizing. This is discussed in relationship to interoceptive awareness.

Pain-related mood influences pain perception differently in fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.

In patients, the perception of pain intensity may be influenced by the subjective representation of their disease. Although both multiple sclerosis (MS) and fibromyalgia (FM) possibly include chronic pain, they seem to elicit different disease representations because of the difference in their respective etiology, the former presenting evidence of underlying lesions as opposed to the latter. Thus, we investigated whether patients with FM differed from patients with MS with respect to their perception of “own” pain as well as others’ pain. In addition, the psychological concomitant factors associated with chronic pain were considered. Chronic pain patients with FM (n=13) or with MS (n=13) participated in this study. To assess specific pain-related features, they were contrasted with 12 other patients with MS but without chronic pain and 31 controls. A questionnaire describing imaginary painful situations showed that FM patients rated situations applied to themselves as less painful than did the controls. Additionally, pain intensity attributed to facial expressions was estimated as more intense in FM compared with the other groups of participants. There is good evidence that the mood and catastrophizing reactions expressed in FM differentially modulated the perception of pain according to whether it was their own pain or other’s pain.