Richness of emotion in people with dementia

Abstract

It is important to explore not only what is lost with the progression of dementia, but also what is left and what can be compensated or developed by adapting to the special needs of the conditions. Some studies suggest that as dementia progresses, people become less emotionally expressive and have difficulties in distinguishing between other people's facial expressions. On the other hand, it is also said as cognitive function declines, anger and anxiety increase, placing a burden on caregivers. Here we report the richness of emotions in people with dementia expressed in their interviews. We analysed the transcripts of 88 interviews of people with dementia (4.8 years after diagnosis), which lasted about 60–90 min, sometimes even longer. Those transcripts are valuable, as they show that people with dementia can express themselves verbally for a long time. From the analysis of the transcripts using Paul Ekman's basic emotions, we found that the strongest emotion expressed in the interviews was happiness. We also conducted a survey of the general public recruited through X about the emotions of people with dementia, and found that people without dementia imagined that the strongest emotion felt by people with dementia was fear. Our results suggest that the cognitive abilities and emotional states of people with dementia can be more robust than people without dementia typically perceive. It might be possible to augment happiness-related emotions by the support of those around people with dementia, and the cognitive efforts of the affected people themselves.