Observational studyJournal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry2017
Observing conversational laughter in frontotemporal dementia.
Observational study in Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Interpersonal Physiological Linkage Between People With Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease and Their Informal Caregivers.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Definitions, phenomenology, diagnosis, and management of the disorders of laughter and crying in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Consensus from ALS and Motor Neuron Disease Scientific Department of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology.Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria · 2023Article
- Older adults' refusal speech act in cognitive assessment: A multimodal pragmatic perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Spared speech fluency is associated with increased functional connectivity in the speech production network in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia.Brain communications · 2023Article
- Enhanced positive emotional reactivity in frontotemporal dementia reflects left-lateralized atrophy in the temporal and frontal lobes.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2022Article
- Frontotemporal dementia: A unique window on the functional role of the temporal lobes.Handbook of clinical neurology · 2022Review
- Laughter as a paradigm of socio-emotional signal processing in dementia.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2021Article
- Decoding expectation and surprise in dementia: the paradigm of music.Brain communications · 2021Article
- Neuroanatomy of Shared Conversational Laughter in Neurodegenerative Disease.Frontiers in neurology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWe performed an observational study of laughter during seminaturalistic conversations between patients with dementia and familial caregivers. Patients were diagnosed with (1) behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), (2) right temporal variant frontotemporal dementia (rtFTD), (3) semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), (4) non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) or (5) early onset Alzheimer's disease (eoAD). We hypothesised that those with bvFTD would laugh less in response to their own speech than other dementia groups or controls, while those with rtFTD would laugh less regardless of who was speaking.
methodsPatients with bvFTD (n=39), svPPA (n=19), rtFTD (n=14), nfvPPA (n=16), eoAD (n=17) and healthy controls (n=156) were recorded (video and audio) while discussing a problem in their relationship with a healthy control companion. Using the audio track only, laughs were identified by trained coders and then further classed by an automated algorithm as occurring during or shortly after the participant's own vocalisation ('self' context) or during or shortly after the partner's vocalisation ('partner' context).
resultsIndividuals with bvFTD, eoAD or rtFTD laughed less across both contexts of self and partner than the other groups. Those with bvFTD laughed less relative to their own speech comparedwith healthy controls. Those with nfvPPA laughed more in the partner context compared with healthy controls.
conclusionsLaughter in response to one's own vocalisations or those of a conversational partner may be a clinically useful measure in dementia diagnosis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.