Comprehension of acoustically degraded emotional prosody in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia
Previous research suggests that emotional prosody perception is impaired in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD) and primary progressive aphasia (PPA). However, no previous research has investigated emotional prosody perception in these diseases under non-ideal listening conditions. We recruited 18 patients with AD, and 31 with PPA (nine logopenic (lvPPA); 11 nonfluent/agrammatic (nfvPPA) and 11 semantic (svPPA)), together with 24 healthy age-matched individuals. Participants listened to speech stimuli conveying three emotions in clear and noise-vocoded forms and had to identify the emotion being conveyed. We then conducted correlation analyses between task performance and measures of socio-emotional functioning. All patient groups showed significant impairments in identifying clear emotional prosody compared to healthy individuals. These deficits were exacerbated under noise-vocoded conditions, with all patient groups performing significantly worse than healthy individuals and patients with lvPPA performing significantly worse than those with svPPA. Significant correlations with social cognition measures were observed more consistently for noise-vocoded than clear emotional prosody comprehension. These findings open a window on a dimension of real-world emotional communication that has often been overlooked in dementia, with particular relevance to social cognition, and begin to suggest a novel candidate paradigm for investigating and quantifying this systematically.
Authors
- Jessica Jiang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7074-3032)
- Harri Sivasathiaseelan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8373-6683)
- Anthipa Chokesuwattanaskul (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7973-8267)
- Elia Benhamou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0194-7995)
- Jason D. Warren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5405-0826)
- Chris JD Hardy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4900-6492)
- Maï‐Carmen Requena‐Komuro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5624-0527)
- Jeremy C. S. Johnson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4265-7997)
- Ross Nortley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9967-4774)
- Annabel Nelson
- Rimona Sharon Weil (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5092-6325)
- Doris‐Eva Bamiou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7486-4264)
- Anna Volkmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-409X)
- Charles R. Marshall (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8227-2354)
Institutions
- Thai Red Cross Society (TH)
- Chulalongkorn University (TH)
- Queen Mary University of London (GB)
- Wexham Park Hospital (GB)
- King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (TH)
- Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (GB)
- National Institute for Health and Care Research (GB)
- MSH Medical School Hamburg – University of Applied Sciences and Medical University (DE)
- UK Dementia Research Institute (GB)
- National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (GB)
- University College London (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2024-12-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-82694-z
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.69
Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Brain Research UK
- National Brain Appeal
- Alzheimer's Society
- National Institute for Health and Care Research
- Brain Research Trust
- Dunhill Medical Trust
- University College London
- Wolfson Foundation
- Alzheimer’s Society
- Royal National Institute for Deaf People