The scale for emotional blunting in patients with frontotemporal dementia.

Emotional blunting may underlie many of the behavioral features of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The Scale for Emotional Blunting (SEB) was evaluated in 12 patients with early FTD, 12 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 12 normal controls. There were overall group differences on the SEB, and the FTD patients had greater emotional blunting than the AD patients. The SEB had good inter-rater reliability and a sensitivity of 92%, and a specificity of 83.5% for FTD. These findings suggest that the SEB may be a good instrument for the early detection and quantification of emotional blunting in patient with FTD.