Altered Sense of Humor in Dementia

作者：Clark Camilla N; Nicholas Jennifer M; Gordon Elizabeth; Golden Hannah L; Cohen Miriam H; Woodward Felix J; Macpherson Kirsty; Slattery Catherine F; Mummery Catherine J; Schott Jonathan M; Rohrer Jonathan D; Warren Jason D^*

来源：Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2016, 49(1): 111-119.

DOI：10.3233/JAD-150413

• Alzheimer's disease
• comedy
• dementia
• frontotemporal dementia
• humor
• progressive aphasia
• semantic dementia

Sense of humor is potentially relevant to social functioning in dementias, but has been little studied in these diseases. We designed a semi-structured informant questionnaire to assess humor behavior and preferences in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 15), semantic dementia (SD; n = 7), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA; n = 10), and Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 16) versus healthy age-matched individuals (n = 21). Altered (including frankly inappropriate) humor responses were significantly more frequent in bvFTD and SD (all patients) than PNFA or AD (around 40% of patients). All patient groups liked satirical and absurdist comedy significantly less than did healthy controls. This pattern was reported premorbidly for satirical comedy in bvFTD, PNFA, and AD. Liking for slapstick comedy did not differ between groups. Altered sense of humor is particularly salient in bvFTD and SD, but also frequent in AD and PNFA. Humor may be a sensitive probe of social cognitive impairment in dementia, with diagnostic, biomarker and social implications.

• 出版日期2016