Motor signatures of emotional reactivity in frontotemporal dementia.

摘要: Automatic motor mimicry is essential to the normal processing of perceived emotion, and disrupted automatic imitation might underpin socio-emotional deficits in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly frontotemporal dementias. However, pathophysiology emotional reactivity these diseases has not been elucidated. We studied facial electromyographic responses during emotion identification on viewing videos dynamic expressions 37 patients representing canonical dementia syndromes versus 21 healthy older individuals. Neuroanatomical associations expression accuracy muscle were assessed using voxel-based morphometry. Controls showed characteristic profiles imitation, this response predicted correct identification. was reduced behavioural right temporal variant groups, while coupling between lost semantic groups. Grey matter correlates delineated within a distributed network including primary visual motor, prefrontal, insular, anterior temporo-occipital junctional areas, with common involvement supplementary cortex across syndromes. Impaired mimesis may be core mechanism disordered signal understanding dementia, implications for development novel physiological biomarkers dysfunction diseases.