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  • Yayın
    An investigation of affective theory of mind ability and its relation to neuropsychological functions in Alzheimer's disease
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2020-09) Yıldırım, Elif; Soncu Büyükişcan, Ezgi; Demirtaş Tatlıdede, Aslı; Bilgiç, Başar; Gürvit, İbrahim Hakan
    Although cognitive theory of mind (ToM) has been largely studied within neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD), studies focusing on affective ToM are relatively limited, yielding inconsistent findings. The current study aimed at investigating affective ToM abilities within different stages of AD (mild AD dementia [ADD], mild cognitive impairment [MCI], and subjective cognitive impairment [SCI]), together with its relationship with neuropsychological functioning. Eighty-one participants were tested with two different ToM tasks (Faux Pas Recognition Test [FPR] and Reading Mind in the Eyes Test [RMET]) and tests of attention, executive functions, episodic memory, and facial recognition. Our results showed two different affective ToM profiles in AD continuum: while ADD group performed poorly on both tasks of ToM, MCI group displayed deteriorated performance on RMET but not on FPR. In addition, ToM performance was significantly related to episodic memory and verbal fluency within the overall sample. These findings suggest that impairment in the decoding process of emotional cues could begin even in the prodromal stage of AD. In contrast, the reasoning process of emotional information, as measured with FPR, could be preserved until the dementia stage. Moreover, the relation of affective ToM with amnestic functions and verbal abilities could provide evidence of a domain-general ToM impairment in AD.
  • Yayın
    An investigation of affective personality traits in Alzheimer’s disease: seeking as a possible predictor for early-stage Alzheimer’s dementia
    (Routledge, 2023-09) Soncu Büyükişcan, Ezgi; Yıldırım, Elif; Demirtaş Tatlıdede, Aslı; Bilgiç, Başar; Gürvit, Hakan
    Objective: The aim of the current study was to investigate affective personality traits in Alzheimer’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition mainly characterized by episodic memory impairment. Method: The sample included 69 participants from 3 diagnostic categories. Twenty-five participants were diagnosed with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), 26 participants were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment of the amnestic type (aMCI), and the remaining 18 participants were diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s dementia (ADD). Diagnostic labels were given as a result of detailed neurological, neuropsychological, and neuroradiological assessment. Affective personality traits were assessed via Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS). Results: The only significant intergroup difference was obtained for the SEEKING subscale of ANPS. Here, ADD group scored significantly lower compared to the SCI group. The results of logistic regression analysis also indicated that SEEKING score successfully predicted early-stage ADD diagnosis. Conclusion: The results suggest that a specific personality constellation characterized by reduced investment in the outside world might be associated with Alzheimer’s disease, either as a risk factor or a byproduct of the neurodegenerative process initiated by AD pathology.
  • Yayın
    Investigation of symptom-specific functional connectivity patterns in Parkinson’s disease
    (Springer-Verlag Italia S.R.L., 2025-06-14) Kıçik, Ani; Bayram, Ali; Erdoğdu, Emel; Kurt, Elif; Sarıdede, Dilek Betül; Cengiz, Sevim; Bilgiç, Başar; Hanağası, Haşmet; Öztürk Işık, Esin; Gürvit, Hakan; Tüzün, Erdem; Demiralp, Tamer
    Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a complex neurodegenerative disease, characterized by pronounced heterogeneity in symptoms. This study investigates the functional connectivity (FC) patterns associated with distinct symptom clusters, aiming to elucidate the heterogeneity in PD and uncover the neural mechanisms underlying its motor and cognitive symptoms. Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data from 55 non-demented PD patients and 24 healthy controls (HC) were used to perform seed-to-seed FC analyses. A clustering algorithm was applied to the cognitive and motor scores of all PD patients to generate relatively homogeneous symptomatic subgroups. PD patients exhibited a general decrease in FC within a network comprising the sensorimotor network (SMN) and the visual network (VN) regions. Symptom-based clustering revealed three relatively homogeneous subgroups, exhibiting a gradient pattern: patients with greater motor deficits showed significant disconnection within the SMN, whereas patients with greater visuospatial deficits exhibited reduced FC in an extended subnetwork, with pronounced disconnections between the VN and SMN areas. Our study demonstrated a notable disconnection between the SMN and VN, indicating impaired visual-motor integration in PD. Stronger disconnection within the SMN was associated with greater motor dysfunction, and stronger visual-sensorimotor disconnections were associated with greater visuospatial deficits. These findings suggest that at least two separate routes of functional disconnection may be responsible for the inhomogeneous symptom distribution in PD.