Cognitive and Emotional Facets of Empathy in Neurodegenerative Disease

项目总结/摘要 阿尔茨海默病（AD）和行为变异性额颞叶痴呆（bvFTD）是毁灭性的 神经退行性疾病对社会情绪功能的影响不同。拟议研究 研究了这些神经退行性疾病中社会情绪功能的两个未充分研究的方面， 认知和情感的同理心，使用来自基础情感科学的客观方法。认知 同理心是一种通过审慎认知准确理解他人情绪的能力。 处理.情感共情是通过自动的情感交流来分享和回应他人情感的能力。 情感镜像过程过去关于神经退行性疾病的共情研究通常利用 容易受到记者偏见影响的线人报告，或未能捕捉情绪方式的情绪标签任务， 在社交互动中动态地展开。需要客观的措施来反映患者的能力， 实时了解、分享和回应他人不断变化的情绪。在目前的研究中，认知 同理心将在实验室中被测量为患者准确理解情感变化的能力。 影片剪辑中角色随时间变化的效价（从负到正）。情感上的同理心也会被捕捉到 在实验室中，通过计算患者的表达和生理反应水平， 他们的配偶在涉及冲突的自然主义社会互动中表达的情感。传统线人 报告和情感标签任务也将用于比较。我将检查诊断差异， bvFTD、AD和健康对照受试者的认知和情感共情（目的1），并确定真实的- 移情缺陷的世界纵向行为影响（目标2）。我将整合实验室测量的 移情与结构和功能神经成像数据，以确定相关的神经系统， bvFTD中的认知和情感共情障碍以及bvFTD中情感共情的假设保留， AD（目标3）。此外，我将比较我们的认知和情感移情任务的神经相关性， 那些发现为线人报告和情绪标签任务（目标3）。本论文的研究将 准备我进行跨学科研究的情绪在神经退行性疾病，并进行未来 这些研究详细描述了各种临床疾病中社会情绪功能障碍的神经解剖学基础。这 F31将提供必要的支持，以实现以下研究目标：（1）获得专业知识， 神经退行性疾病，包括神经解剖学和鉴别诊断;（2）精通 结构和功能连接神经影像分析;（3）学习先进的统计技术 用于纵向和二元数据分析。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are devastating neurodegenerative diseases that differentially affect socioemotional functioning. The proposed research examines two understudied facets of socioemotional functioning in these neurodegenerative diseases, cognitive and emotional empathy, using objective methods derived from basic affective science. Cognitive empathy is the ability to accurately understand another person's emotions through deliberative cognitive processing. Emotional empathy is the ability to share and respond to other's emotions through automatic affective mirroring process. Past research on empathy in neurodegenerative diseases has typically utilized informant reports susceptible to reporter bias, or emotion-labeling tasks that fail to capture the way emotions dynamically unfold during social interactions. Objective measures are needed that reflect patients' abilities to understand, share, and respond to other's changing emotions in real-time. In the current studies, cognitive empathy will be measured in the laboratory as patients' ability to accurately understand the changing emotional valence (negative to positive) of a character in a film clip over time. Emotional empathy will also be captured objectively in the laboratory by calculating patients' level of expressive and physiological responsiveness to their spouse's expressed affect during naturalistic social interactions involving conflict. Traditional informant reports and an emotion-labeling task will also be used for comparison. I will examine diagnostic differences in cognitive and emotional empathy in bvFTD, AD, and healthy control subjects (Aim 1) and determine the real- world longitudinal behavioral impact of empathy deficits (Aim 2). I will integrate laboratory measures of empathy with structural and functional neuroimaging data in order to identify the neural systems related to cognitive and emotional empathy impairment in bvFTD and hypothesized preservation of emotional empathy in AD (Aim 3). In addition, I will compare the neural correlates of our cognitive and emotional empathy tasks with those found for informant reports and an emotion-labeling task (Aim 3). The proposed dissertation research will prepare me to conduct interdisciplinary studies of emotion in neurodegenerative disease and to conduct future studies that detail the neuroanatomical bases of socioemotional dysfunction in various clinical disorders. This F31 will provide the support necessary to accomplish the following research goals: (1) to gain expertise in neurodegenerative disease, including neuroanatomy and differential diagnosis; (2) to become proficient in structural and functional connectivity neuroimaging analyses; and (3) to learn advanced statistical techniques for longitudinal and dyadic data analyses.