Postdoctoral associate Hannah Phillips, PhD leading SUNY Upstate graduate students in Dr. Wei-Dong Yao’s lab, is investigating why patients with dementia suffer empathy loss. In a paper recently published in Neuron entitled "Dorsomedial Prefrontal Hypoexcitability Underlies Lost Empathy in Frontotemporal Dementia," the researchers found they were able to restore empathy in mice even when substantial neurodegeneration had occurred.

Hannah Phillips. PhD, postdoctoral associate in the lab of Dr. Wei-Dong Yao, led a group at SUNY Upstate to publish a paper on empathy loss in dementia patients.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a leading form of presenile dementia. About half of all FTD cases are characterized by marked changes in personality, judgment, inhibitory control, and affect. This includes the loss of empathy, arguably the most distressing condition for family and caretakers. While lost empathy is a major symptom of FTD, “surprisingly little is known about the biological basis,” explains Yao. “This is the main driving force of our study.”

Their study found that prefrontal neurons are hypoexcitable, or less active, at a symptomatic stage of FTD. They found that activating those neurons is effective to restore empathy, even at an advanced disease stage with substantial neurodegeneration.

This discovery could lead to new treatments for FTD patients, says Yao.  “For example, we can try to treat patients by enhancing their frontal activity via TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation) or some variants of DBS (Deep brain stimulation), and try to reprogram iPSCs (Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells)  from patients and measure their cortical excitability as a screening and diagnostic/predictive measure.”

Yao praises the work done in his lab. “The best part is that it’s entirely done at Upstate, by our talented graduate students.”

You can read the full paper published by Neuron here:

You can also read more about Phillips, who will be starting a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Naoshige Uchida’s lab at Harvard University in February, here.