Emotional curiosity: modulation of visuospatial attention by arousal is preserved in aging and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease

doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(00)00077-4

Neuropsychologia

Volume 38, Issue 13, December 2000, Pages 1734-1740

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(00)00077-4 Get rights and content

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that Alzheimer’s disease, even in its early stages, decreases novelty-seeking behaviors (curiosity) and impairs the shifting of spatial attention to extrapersonal targets. In this study, early-stage probable Alzheimer’s disease patients (PRAD) and young and aging controls were shown pairs of visual scenes, some of which contained emotionally-arousing material, while eye movements were recorded under free viewing conditions. In all three subject groups, emotionally-arousing scenes attracted more viewing time and also became the preferential target of the initial visual orientation. Our findings suggest that the arousing properties of sensory stimuli may overcome some of the AD-related impairments in the distribution of attention to extrapersonal targets. These results may have implications for interventions aimed at improving the cognitive symptoms of PRAD.

Introduction

The neuropsychological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a severe impairment of memory function. However, the adaptive deployment of attention to extrapersonal events is also frequently disrupted early in the course of the disease and interferes with activities of daily living. These attentional deficits are multifaceted and include altered visual search strategies [8], [22], [24], an inability to disengage the focus of attention [20], [23] and reduced orientation to novel and complex stimuli [4]. Furthermore, while AD patients may be able to focus attention globally or locally when each mode is tested in a separate experiment, they have difficulty when required to switch between these processing modes in the same block of experimental trials [7].

One possible strategy for improving attentional engagement in AD is to enhance the emotional impact of environmental stimuli. Several studies have argued for the preservation of emotional processing relative to the cognitive decline in mild AD [1], [2], [12], [25]. Thus, it might be predicted that arousal provoked by emotionally-charged stimuli would deploy attentional resources toward the pertinent sectors of extrapersonal space. The influence of emotional arousal on the regulation of attention in AD has not been directly investigated and is the focus of the current study.

Section snippets

Subjects

A total of 42 subjects participated in this study. Nine patients with mild probable Alzheimer’s disease (PRAD) and nine nondemented aging controls (AC) were recruited from the Clinical Core subject registry of the Northwestern Alzheimer’s Disease Center. Subjects had undergone neurological and neuropsychological examinations to establish the diagnosis of PRAD in the patient group [21] and the absence of cognitive deficits or alterations in daily living activities in the control group. In order

Experiment 2

The modulation of visuospatial attention in Experiment 1 is likely related to the arousal properties of the stimuli. It is possible, however, that lower-level perceptual features contributed to the observed oculographic patterns. For example, mere attention to stimulus color could account for the results if the subjects were differentially attending to color information across the stimulus categories. This is important to consider for negatively-valent scenes, as some of them contain images of

General discussion

The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that, in the early stages of AD, patients can direct their attention to environmental stimuli in a normal manner when the stimuli contain negatively-valent emotional content. ‘Emotional curiosity’ as measured within our paradigm contains two components: an early attentional orienting component that directs the first saccade toward the emotionally-arousing cue in the pair and a sustained attention component that keeps the eyes focused on the emotional

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Shelly Huddle for assistance with data collection and analysis. Supported in part by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award (KSL), NIH Grant NS30863-03 (MMM) and NIA Grant AG14068 (SW).

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Emotional curiosity: modulation of visuospatial attention by arousal is preserved in aging and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Subjects

Experiment 2

General discussion

Acknowledgements

Journal of Psychiatric Research

NeuroImage

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Journal of Neurological Sciences

Journal of Psychiatric Research

Perception of affect in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type

Archives of Neurology

Emotion processing in Alzheimer’s disease

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

Eye fixations and memory for emotional events

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition

Diminished curiosity in patients with probable Alzheimer’s disease as measured by exploratory eye movements

Neurology

Automatically elicited fear: Conditioned skin conductance responses to masked facial expressions

Cognition and Emotion

Comparison of two screening tests in Alzheimer’s disease: The correlation and reliability of the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Modified Blessed Test

Archives of Neurology

Directed and divided attention in Alzheimer’s disease: Impairment in shifting of attention to global and local stimuli

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

Selective attention skills in Alzheimer’s disease: Performance on graded cancellation tests varying in density and complexity

Journal of Gerontology

Functions of the amygdala and related forebrain areas in attention and cognition

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences USA