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Volume 3
Journal of Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience
Neurology 2019 | Neuropsychology 2019 | Drug Delivery Summit 2019
June 24-25, 2019
June 24-25, 2019 | Rome, Italy
Neurology and Healthcare
3
rd
WorldDrug Delivery and Formulations Summit
Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
4
th
International Conference on
International Conference on
&
The recognition and intensity of moral emotions in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia
Sandra Baez
1
, Cristina Bleier
1
, Hernando Santamaría-García
2
, José Santamaría-García
1
,
1
Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
2
Physiology and Psychiatry, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
Statement of the Problem:
The study of moral emotions is essential for understanding the interactions between cognitive,
affective and social processes, as well as for understanding their role as motivators of human social behavior. Neuroimaging
studies have implicated frontal and temporal structures in moral cognition, thus behavioral variant of Frontotemporal
Dementia (bvFTD) has provided a lesion model essential to investigate the processes involved in moral emotions.
Methodology: In this study, we aimed to investigate the recognition, intensity and affectation of moral emotions in patients
with bvFTD (n=16). We included a control group of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD, n=18), and healthy controls
(n=21). Participants were assessed with a novel task to measure recognition, intensity and affectation of basic and moral
emotions. Findings: Compared with the AD group and healthy controls, patients with bvFTD obtained significantly lower
scores in embarrassment, anger and fear recognition. BvFTDpatients also experienced anger and pitywith less intensity than
both control groups. Conclusion & Significance: These results support previous studies in patients with bvFTD showing
emotion recognition and moral cognition impairments. These results provide new insights into moral emotions pathways in
bvFTDpatients that cannot be fully explained by social cognitive and executive functions deficits. Further studies should use
neuroimaging techniques in order to correlate atrophy patterns with recognition, intensity and affectation of moral emotions.
Biography
Sandra Baez is professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Los Andes University. She holds a degree in Psychology, a Master
in Neuropsychology, and a Ph.D. in Psychology. She conducted her postdoctoral and received training in functional and structural
neuroimaging at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. She has experience in neuropsychological
assessment and cognitive stimulation techniques for patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Her interests and research
experience are focused on neuropsychological aspects as well as neurophysiological and neuroanatomical correlates of social
cognition domains in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. She has more than 50 publications in leading journals, such as Nature
Human Behavior, Neurology, Brain, JAMA Neurology, among others. She is Associate Editor of Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and
Frontiers in Psychiatry, and ad hoc Reviewer for more than 20 journals. She is also part of the Project team taskforce of the Human
Affectome Project.
sj.baez@uniandes.edu.coJ Neurol Clin Neurosci, Volume 3