Work

Expressive prosody in behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration and late-onset psychiatric disorders.

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Neuropsychological assessment of social cognition has traditionally focused on mentalizing and emotions recognition. Recently developed digital measures allow clinicians to capture direct markers of abnormal social interactions, but they have not yet been used to distinguish neurological from psychiatric populations. This study examined prosodic alterations and explored structural neural correlates in behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD) versus late-onset or atypical psychiatric disorders (LOAPD) and healthy controls (HCs). METHOD: ₀) metrics were extracted to assess between-group differences and to identify voxel-based morphometry correlates of prosodic alteration. RESULTS: < .05, family-wise error corrected). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with bvFTD demonstrate a narrowed pitch span and reduced intonational variability, linked to disruptions in frontotemporal networks integrating emotional and semantic cues into speech. These findings highlight the relevance of prosodic alterations as a target for further research in bvFTD and assessment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Neuropsychology

DOI: 10.1037/neu0001041