scholarly journals A tale of two hemispheres: Contrasting socioemotional dysfunction in right- versus left-lateralised semantic dementia

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muireann Irish ◽  
Fiona Kumfor ◽  
John R. Hodges ◽  
Olivier Piguet
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Semantic Dementia ◽  
Facial Emotions ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Progressive Degeneration ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobes ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACT Objective: Semantic dementia, a subtype of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, is characterised by cross-modal loss of conceptual knowledge attributable to progressive degeneration of the left anterior temporal lobe. Much less is known regarding the clinical presentation of SD patients with predominantly right-lateralised atrophy. Recent reports emphasise marked socioemotional and behavioural disturbances in such cases. Given the importance of the right anterior temporal lobes in social cognition, we hypothesised that socioemotional functioning would be disproportionately affected in right versus left-lateralised SD cases. Methods: We assessed well-characterised cases of predominantly right (n=10) and left (n=12) SD and 20 matched healthy controls on tests of emotion processing and interpersonal functioning. Results: Right SD cases showed disproportionate difficulties in the recognition of positive and negative facial emotions, specifically happiness and anger, compared with left SD cases. Deficits in anger recognition persisted in right SD despite covarying for facial and semantic processing. On a contextually rich task of emotion recognition using multimodal videos, no subgroup differences were evident. Finally, empathic concern was rated as significantly lower by caregivers of right versus left SD cases. Overall, the extent of socioemotional disturbance was associated with the degree of behavioural changes in SD. Conclusion: Our results reveal considerable overlap in the extent to which socioemotional processes are disrupted in left and right-lateralised cases of SD. Notably, however, right SD cases show disproportionate deficits for recognition of facial emotions and the capacity for empathic concern, supporting a specialised role for the right anterior temporal lobes in mediating these cognitive functions.

scholarly journals Differential Activity for Animals and Manipulable Objects in the Anterior Temporal Lobes

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 2059-2067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Anzellotti ◽  
Bradford Z. Mahon ◽  
Jens Schwarzbach ◽  
Alfonso Caramazza
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Bold Signal ◽  
Object Processing ◽  
Susceptibility Artifacts ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Temporal Pole ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Neuropsychological Findings

Neuropsychological evidence has highlighted the role of the anterior temporal lobes in the processing of conceptual knowledge. That putative role is only beginning to be investigated with fMRI as methodological advances are able to compensate for well-known susceptibility artifacts that affect the quality of the BOLD signal. In this article, we described differential BOLD activation for pictures of animals and manipulable objects in the anterior temporal lobes, consistent with previous neuropsychological findings. Furthermore, we found that the pattern of BOLD signal in the anterior temporal lobes is qualitatively different from that in the fusiform gyri. The latter regions are activated to different extents but always above baseline by images of the preferred and of the nonpreferred categories, whereas the anterior temporal lobes tend to be activated by images of the preferred category and deactivated (BOLD below baseline) by images of the nonpreferred category. In our experimental design, we also manipulated the decision that participants made over stimuli from the different semantic categories. We found that in the right temporal pole, the BOLD signal shows some evidence of being modulated by the task that participants were asked to perform, whereas BOLD activity in more posterior regions (e.g., the fusiform gyri) is not modulated by the task. These results reconcile the fMRI literature with the neuropsychological findings of deficits for animals after damage to the right temporal pole and suggest that anterior and posterior regions within the temporal lobes involved in object processing perform qualitatively different computations.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE RIGHT AND LEFT MESIAL TEMPORAL LOBES TO MUSIC MEMORY: EVIDENCE FROM MELODIC LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH J. WILSON ◽  
MICHAEL M. SALING
Keyword(s):  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Learning Curves ◽  
Memory Impairments ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Patient Groups ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Mesial Temporal Lobe ◽  
The Right ◽  
Musical Context

THE AIM OF THIS STUDY WAS TO ASSESS the effects of left- and right-sided MTL damage on melodic memory using a newly developed arbitrary relational learning task. Participants included patients with MTL damage, patient controls,musicians, and musician controls. The learning curves of these groups showed striking differences, with right MTL patients failing to learn tonal (easy) melody pairs. Both patient groups had difficulty learning nontonal (hard) pairs. Performance was greatest for the musicians, particularly for the nontonal melody pairs. These differences were not primarily attributable to pitch discrimination or pitch working memory impairments. The findings point to differential contributions of the left and right mesial temporal lobes to melodic memory, with specificity of the right mesial temporal lobe emerging for melodic learning within a tonal musical context.

scholarly journals Processing of Words and Faces by Patients with Left and Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Ellis ◽  
Jonathan C. Hillam ◽  
Alistair Cardno ◽  
Janice Kay
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Face Processing ◽  
Reading Tests ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Control Subjects ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy ◽  
The Right

Tests of word and face processing were given to patients with complex partial epilepsy focussed on the left or right temporal lobe, and to non-epileptic control subjects. The left TLE group showed the greatest impairment on object naming and on reading tests, but the right TLE group also showed a lesser impairment relative to the normal control subjects on both tests. The right TLE group was selectively impaired on distinguishing famous from non-famous faces while the left TLE group was impaired at naming famous faces they had successfully recognized as familiar. There was no significant difference between the three groups on recognition memory for words. The implications of the results for theories of the role of the temporal lobes in word and face processing, and the possible neural mechanisms responsible for the deficits in TLE patients, are discussed.

Contributions of left and right anterior temporal lobes to semantic cognition: Evidence from patients with small temporopolar lesions

2021 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 107738
Author(s):  
Claudia Poch ◽  
Rafael Toledano ◽  
Irene García-Morales ◽  
Yasser Alemán-Gómez ◽  
Antonio Gil-Nagel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Semantic Cognition ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobes

scholarly journals Evidence for Integrated Visual Face and Body Representations in the Anterior Temporal Lobes

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 1178-1193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronson B. Harry ◽  
Katja Umla-Runge ◽  
Andrew D. Lawrence ◽  
Kim S. Graham ◽  
Paul E. Downing
Keyword(s):  
Neural Coding ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Unexpected Finding ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Strong Response ◽  
Body Representations ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobes ◽  
The Right

Research on visual face perception has revealed a region in the ventral anterior temporal lobes, often referred to as the anterior temporal face patch (ATFP), which responds strongly to images of faces. To date, the selectivity of the ATFP has been examined by contrasting responses to faces against a small selection of categories. Here, we assess the selectivity of the ATFP in humans with a broad range of visual control stimuli to provide a stronger test of face selectivity in this region. In Experiment 1, participants viewed images from 20 stimulus categories in an event-related fMRI design. Faces evoked more activity than all other 19 categories in the left ATFP. In the right ATFP, equally strong responses were observed for both faces and headless bodies. To pursue this unexpected finding, in Experiment 2, we used multivoxel pattern analysis to examine whether the strong response to face and body stimuli reflects a common coding of both classes or instead overlapping but distinct representations. On a voxel-by-voxel basis, face and whole-body responses were significantly positively correlated in the right ATFP, but face and body-part responses were not. This finding suggests that there is shared neural coding of faces and whole bodies in the right ATFP that does not extend to individual body parts. In contrast, the same approach revealed distinct face and body representations in the right fusiform gyrus. These results are indicative of an increasing convergence of distinct sources of person-related perceptual information proceeding from the posterior to the anterior temporal cortex.

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