Emotional Comparison Between Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Ping Wang; Qianhua Zhao; Yan Zhou; Zhen Hong; Qihao Guo; Jianren Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.680332

Emotional Comparison Between Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Front Psychiatry. 2021 May 13:12:680332. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.680332. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Ping Wang¹, Qianhua Zhao², Yan Zhou², Zhen Hong², Qihao Guo³, Jianren Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Neurology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Geriatrics, Shanghai Jiaotong University Affiliated Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have suggested that Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia (SD) are both associated with emotional processing impairment. However, the degree and type of emotional symptoms between the two types of dementia have not been previously compared. Method: We used the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES), the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to examine apathy, empathy, depression and anxiety, respectively. Results: Between mild AD and mild SD, moderate-to-severe AD and moderate-to-severe SD, the total scores of TEQ are significantly different, but the total scores of GDS, SAS and AES have no significant differences. In addition, normal individuals, AD and SD patients got the similar scores in SAS and GDS. Conclusions: Empathy emotion in SD patients is more severe than that in AD patients. However, apathy, depression and anxiety emotion is similar between the two groups.

Keywords: alzhaimer's disease; anxiety; apathy; depression; empathy; semantic dementia.