Self-conscious emotions, which are important for social functioning, may be disproportionately impaired among patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).  This impairment may help distinguish patients with bvFTD early in their disease from those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or healthy controls (HCs). 

In a pilot study, we investigated embarrassability among 8 early bvFTD patients, 7 comparably-impaired AD patients, and 7 HCs.  1.) The participants were administered a 36-item Embarrassability Scale, which contains items of self-embarrassing situations and items of embarrassment for others. 2.) As a measure of sympathetic arousal, the participants underwent continuous recordings of skin conductance levels (SCLs) while watching themselves on a two minute pre-recorded video.  In order to elicit embarrassability during the viewing video, the participants were aware of being intensely watched and evaluated for their reactions. 3.) The dementia patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI with analysis for regions of interest (ROIs)). 

These results suggest that impaired self-conscious emotional reactivity in bvFTD is associated with sympathetic hyporeactivity and can be measures with the easily self- administered Embarrassability Scale. These findings further corroborate the impact of impaired self-conscious emotions on bvFTD.