Distinct neuropsychological correlates of cognitive, behavioral, and affective apathy sub-domains in acquired brain injury
Author(s)
Njomboro, Progress
Deb, Shoumitro
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Apathy has a high prevalence and a significant contribution to treatment and rehabilitation outcomes in acquired brain damage. Research on the disorder's neuropsychological correlates has produced mixed results. While the mixed picture may be due to the use of varied assessment tools on different patient populations, it is also the case that most studies treat apathy as a unitary syndrome. This is despite the evidence that apathy is a multifaceted and multidimensional syndrome. This study investigates the neuropsychological correlates of apathy in 49 patients with acquired brain damage. It further fractionates apathy symptoms into affective, cognitive, and behavioral sub-domains and investigates their individual relations with standard measures of affective, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. Global apathy scores were not related to any of these measures. Affective apathy was associated with emotion perception deficits, and cognitive apathy was associated with executive deficits on the Brixton test. These results demonstrate that treating apathy as a single entity may hide important correlates to apathy symptoms that become visible when the disorder is fractionated into its sub-domains. The study highlights the research and clinical importance of treating apathy as a multidimensional syndrome.
Date Issued
2014-05-19
Date Acceptance
2014-05-01
Citation
Frontiers in Neurology, 2014, 5, pp.73-73
ISSN
1664-2295
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Start Page
73
End Page
73
Journal / Book Title
Frontiers in Neurology
Volume
5
Copyright Statement
© 2014 Njomboro and Deb. This is an open-access article distributed underthe terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distributionor reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensorare credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance withaccepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted whichdoes not comply with these terms.
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24904518
Subjects
affective
apathy
behavioral
cognitive
depression
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Switzerland
Date Publish Online
2014-05-19