What is it about?
Humans have a capacity to infer and comprehend what their pairs may think and feel. This capacity, called the theory of mind, may be impaired in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, it has been shown that they have difficulties in understanding both, thoughts and feelings of other people, although they seem to recognize quite correctly emotions from facial expressions. In the present study we were interested in the capacity of understanding feelings from context, when facial expressions are not available. Our data suggest that this capacity is impaired in Alzheimer’s disease patients, but not for all emotions. Disgust, sadness and surprise being more difficult to understand from context than anger, fear and joy.
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Why is it important?
The data coming from the present study may contribute to our better understanding of Alzheimer’s disease patients’ reactions in emotional context, and to the improvement of our interactions with these patients.
Perspectives
Conducting this research and writing this article was a great pleasure for me as understanding impairment of behavior in Alzheimer's disease patients is a very important health issue. If it may contribute, even slightly, to improvement of these people life it would be a great reward for me and the co-authors of this work.
Hanna Chainay
Universite Lumiere Lyon 2
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: First-order Affective Theory of Mind in Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and in Healthy Older Adults, Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement, October 2018, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0714980818000363.
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