Understanding Dementia, Article Review Example

The researchers of this study were attempting to understand emotional response differences between patients with two different types of Dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease.   Three groups were tested using an aversive acoustic startle: a group of Alzheimer’s patients, a group of patients with frontotermporal lobar degeneration, and a control group neurologically normal subjects.  All groups were of the same age strata. The study was performed because the precise characterization of emotional regulation in dementia patients is rare in the scientific literature.  This study was an attempt to apply laboratory methods in order to ascertain the exact deficits of emotional regulation in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration from those with Alzheimer’s disease.  Understanding the differences in emotional responses between the two sets of dementia patients can prove useful to physicians in precisely diagnosing patients with a specific dementia disorder.

This was a well researched and well thought out study.   The tests used to ascertain responses were multi-tiered, offering the ability to cross examine responses to ensure that a correct conclusion was reached.  Emotional facial behavior was analyzed by a specially trained research team.  Somatic activity of the participants was recorded during and after the acoustic startle was performed using a transducer.  Participants were also questioned about their responses, and these answers were also analyzed.  The researcher’s approach to the experiment seemed appropriate to their study.  Emotional response is subjective, so having multiple ways of testing the responses supplied more data to correlate, giving a more robust set of results.  These results correlated using statistical tests where a p value was obtained.  The results led to clear conclusions.  Another aspect not addressed, though, was the extent of brain damage that patients in the study may have had.  In the paper’s introduction, the authors state that “Neurodegenerative diseases…can also cause circumscribed loss of brain tissue.” (30). In the methods section it is stated that both groups of dementia patients had MRI’s performed, yet these results were not correlated with the emotional response data.  Perhaps this added correlation could have led to deeper conclusions regarding brain tissue loss and emotional response.

References

Goodkind, Madeleine S., Gyurak, Anett, McCarthy, Megan, Miller, Bruce L. (2010) Emotion

regulation deficits in frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease. Psychology and Aging 1(25): 30-37.