AFFECTIVE-DISORDERS RELATED TO SPECT PATTERNS IN ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE -A STUDY OF EMOTIONALISM

Mood disorder in dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) is heterogeneous in presentation. A typical feature is emotionalism, defined by Allman (1991) as 'a heightened tendency to cry (or rarely laugh) such that c rying occurs more frequently, more easily, more vigorously, or in circ umstances that previously would have been out of character'. Given the evidence for the involvement of cerebral laterality in the control of emotion, we investigated the relationship between emotionalism and 99 mTc-HMPAO-SPECT patterns in 14 DAT patients. Right/left frontolateral asymmetry was significantly greater in the eight emotionalism-positive patients than in the six emotionalism-negative patients.