SORA

Advancing, promoting and sharing knowledge of health through excellence in teaching, clinical practice and research into the prevention and treatment of illness

Processing emotion from abstract art in frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Cohen, MH; Carton, AM; Hardy, CJ; Golden, HL; Clark, CN; Fletcher, PD; Jaisin, K; Marshall, CR; Henley, SMD; Rohrer, JD; et al. Cohen, MH; Carton, AM; Hardy, CJ; Golden, HL; Clark, CN; Fletcher, PD; Jaisin, K; Marshall, CR; Henley, SMD; Rohrer, JD; Crutch, SJ; Warren, JD (2016) Processing emotion from abstract art in frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Neuropsychologia, 81. pp. 245-254. ISSN 0028-3932 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.12.031
SGUL Authors: Clark, Camilla Neegaard

[img]
Preview
PDF Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (991kB) | Preview

Abstract

Abstract art may signal emotions independently of a biological or social carrier: it might therefore constitute a test case for defining brain mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and the impact of disease states on those mechanisms. This is potentially of particular relevance to diseases in the frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) spectrum. These diseases are often led by emotional impairment despite retained or enhanced artistic interest in at least some patients. However, the processing of emotion from art has not been studied systematically in FTLD. Here we addressed this issue using a novel emotional valence matching task on abstract paintings in patients representing major syndromes of FTLD (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, n=11; sematic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), n=7; nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), n=6) relative to healthy older individuals (n=39). Performance on art emotion valence matching was compared between groups taking account of perceptual matching performance and assessed in relation to facial emotion matching using customised control tasks. Neuroanatomical correlates of art emotion processing were assessed using voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MR images. All patient groups had a deficit of art emotion processing relative to healthy controls; there were no significant interactions between syndromic group and emotion modality. Poorer art emotion valence matching performance was associated with reduced grey matter volume in right lateral occopitotemporal cortex in proximity to regions previously implicated in the processing of dynamic visual signals. Our findings suggest that abstract art may be a useful model system for investigating mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and aesthetic processing in neurodegenerative diseases.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Experimental Psychology, 1109 Neurosciences, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: Academic Structure > Molecular and Clinical Sciences Research Institute (MCS)
Journal or Publication Title: Neuropsychologia
ISSN: 0028-3932
Language: en
Dates:
DateEvent
29 January 2016Published
31 December 2015Published Online
30 December 2015Accepted
Publisher License: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
Projects:
Project IDFunderFunder ID
ES/K006711/1Economic and Social Research Councilhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000269
EP/M006093/1Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councilhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000266
091673/Z/10/ZWellcome Trusthttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100004440
URI: https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/112264
Publisher's version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.12.031

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item