The overlapping relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind

Pupil mimicry promotes trust through the theory-of-mind network

The human eye can provide powerful insights into the emotions and intentions of others; however, how pupillary changes influence observers' behavior remains largely unknown. The present fMRI-pupillometry study revealed that when the pupils of interacting partners synchronously dilate, trust is promoted, which suggests that pupil mimicry affiliates people. Here we provide evidence that pupil mimicry modulates trust decisions through the activation of the theory-of-mind network (precuneus, temporo-parietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, and medial prefrontal cortex). This network was recruited during pupil-dilation mimicry compared with interactions without mimicry or compared with pupil-constriction mimicry. Furthermore, the level of theory-of-mind engagement was proportional to individual's susceptibility to pupil-dilation mimicry. These data reveal a fundamental mechanism by which an individual's pupils trigger neurophysiological responses within an observer: when interacting partners synchronously dilate their pupils, humans come to feel reflections of the inner states of others, which fosters trust formation.

Cognitive and Affective Perspective-Taking: Evidence for Shared and Dissociable Anatomical Substrates

Perspective-taking refers to the ability to recognize another person's point of view. Crucial to the development of interpersonal relationships and prosocial behavior, perspective-taking is closely linked to human empathy, and like empathy, perspective-taking is commonly subdivided into cognitive and affective components. While the two components of empathy have been frequently compared, the differences between cognitive and affective perspective-taking have been under-investigated in the cognitive neuroscience literature to date. Here, we define cognitive perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's thoughts or beliefs, and affective perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's feelings or emotions. In this paper, we review data from functional imaging studies in healthy adults as well as behavioral and structural imaging studies in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia in order to determine if there are distinct neural correlates for cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Data suggest that there are both shared and non-shared cognitive and anatomic substrates. For example, while both types of perspective-taking engage regions such as the temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and temporal poles, only affective perspective-taking engages regions within the limbic system and basal ganglia. Differences are also observed in prefrontal cortex: while affective perspective-taking engages ventromedial prefrontal cortex, cognitive perspective-taking engages dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To corroborate these findings, we also examine if cognitive and affective perspective-taking share the same relationship with executive functions. While it is clear that affective perspective-taking requires emotional substrates that are less prominent in cognitive perspective-taking, it remains unknown to what extent executive functions (including working memory, mental set switching, and inhibitory control) may contribute to each process. Overall results indicate that cognitive perspective-taking is dependent on executive functioning (particularly mental set switching), while affective perspective-taking is less so. We conclude with a critique of the current literature, with a focus on the different outcome measures used across studies and misconceptions due to imprecise terminology, as well as recommendations for future research.

A New Layered Model on Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been an important and controversial topic during the last few decades. Its significance and its correlation with many domains of life has made it the subject of expert study. EI is the rudder for feeling, thinking, learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. In this article, we present an emotional⁻cognitive based approach to the process of gaining emotional intelligence and thus, we suggest a nine-layer pyramid of emotional intelligence and the gradual development to reach the top of EI.

Exploring emotion regulation and emotion recognition in people with presymptomatic Huntington's disease: The role of emotional awareness

Interest in the role of both emotion regulation and recognition in our understanding of mental health has been steadily increasing, especially in people with chronic illness who also have psychological difficulties. One illness which belongs to this category is Huntington's disease. Huntington's disease (HD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder that can cause a number of cognitive and psychological difficulties, including emotion recognition deficits, even before the onset of the symptoms required to make a formal diagnosis. Despite the lack of definite evidence, recent studies have suggested that deficits of emotion regulation and recognition may be expected to play a pivotal role in the early cognitive manifestations of HD. In this study, we hypothesised that the ability to regulate emotions can be impaired in people with presymptomatic HD, and that such impairment may be associated with a deficit of emotion recognition. To test this, an online survey was carried out with 117 English and Italian-speaking people with presymptomatic HD, compared to 217 controls matched for age and education. The results suggest that, in presymptomatic participants, emotion regulation and emotion recognition are generally not significantly impaired, and no significant relationships between performances on the two constructs were observed. However, a specific impairment in emotional awareness (a subscale on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, DERS) was observed, which appears to be enhanced by the co-occurrence of depressive symptoms, even at a subclinical level. Consequently, it is suggested that difficulties in emotional awareness may represent a precursor of more general emotion recognition impairments, which only become apparent as the disease reaches a more symptomatic level. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are proposed.

Intranasal oxytocin does not reduce age-related difficulties in social cognition

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social processing and there are several studies suggesting that intranasally administered oxytocin may enhance social cognitive abilities and visual attention in healthy and clinical groups. However, there are very few studies to date that have investigated the potential benefits of intranasal oxytocin (iOT) on older adults' social cognitive abilities. This is a surprising omission, because relative to their younger counterparts, older adults also exhibit a range of social cognitive difficulties and also show differences in the way they visually attend to social information. Therefore, we tested the effect of iOT (24 IU) versus a placebo spray on 59 older and 61 younger adults' social cognitive abilities and visual attention using a double-blind placebo-controlled within-groups design. While iOT provided no overall age-related benefit on social cognitive abilities, the key finding to emerge was that iOT improved ToM ability in both age-groups when the task had minimal contextual information, but not when the task had enriched contextual information. Interestingly, iOT had gender specific effects during a ToM task with minimal context. For males in both age-groups, iOT reduced gazing to the social aspects of the scenes (i.e., faces & bodies), and for females, iOT eliminated age differences in gaze patterns that were observed in the placebo condition. These effects on eye-gaze were not observed in a very similar ToM task that included more enriched contextual information. Overall, these findings highlight the interactive nature of iOT with task related factors (e.g., context), and are discussed in relation to the social salience hypothesis of oxytocin.

Deficient Emotion Processing is Associated with Everyday Functioning Capacity in HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorder

OBJECTIVE

Emotion processing has received little research focus in HIV, but emerging evidence suggests that abilities such as facial affect discrimination may be features of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND). The present study hypothesized that individuals with HAND would evidence an emotion processing deficit relative to cognitively unimpaired individuals with HIV and seronegative comparison participants on a task assessing these abilities. Moreover, it was expected that this deficit would be significantly associated with social aspects of everyday functioning.

METHOD

To explore these hypotheses, 37 HIV+ individuals with HAND, 46 HIV+ without HAND, and 38 HIV-seronegative comparison participants were administered the CogState Social Emotional Cognition Task (SECT) and the UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment-Brief (UPSA-B).

RESULTS

Results revealed that the HAND group was more likely to have impaired accuracy and slower reaction time relative to the comparison groups on the SECT task. In fact, individuals with HAND were almost 10 times more likely to be impaired on emotion processing accuracy than HIV+ without HAND. Among individuals with HIV, accuracy (but not reaction time) was independently related to a functional capacity measure tapping social ability, but not to a similar measure without a social component (UPSA-B Communication and Finances subscales, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that disruption of emotion processing may be an important feature of HAND that has clinical value as an independent predictor of real-world activities that involve social components. Future research should prospectively investigate this relationship, which may inform of intervention strategies for improving everyday functioning.

The Two-Systems Account of Theory of Mind: Testing the Links to Social- Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities

According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of others involves both fast social-perceptual processes, as well as slower, reflexive cognitive operations (Frith and Frith, 2008; Apperly and Butterfill, 2009). To test the respective roles of specific abilities in either of these processes we administered 15 experimental procedures to a large sample of 343 participants, testing ability in face recognition and holistic perception, language, and reasoning. ToM was measured by a set of tasks requiring ability to track and to infer complex emotional and mental states of others from faces, eyes, spoken language, and prosody. We used structural equation modeling to test the relative strengths of a social-perceptual (face processing related) and reflexive-cognitive (language and reasoning related) path in predicting ToM ability. The two paths accounted for 58% of ToM variance, thus validating a general two-systems framework. Testing specific predictor paths revealed language and face recognition as strong and significant predictors of ToM. For reasoning, there were neither direct nor mediated effects, albeit reasoning was strongly associated with language. Holistic face perception also failed to show a direct link with ToM ability, while there was a mediated effect via face recognition. These results highlight the respective roles of face recognition and language for the social brain, and contribute closer empirical specification of the general two-systems account.

Assessing the integrity of the cognitive processes involved in belief reasoning by means of two nonverbal tasks: Rationale, normative data collection and illustration with brain-damaged patients

Every day, we engage in social interactions with other people which require understanding their as well as our own mental states. Such capacity is commonly referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM). Disturbances of ToM are often reported in diverse pathologies which affect brain functioning and lead to problems in social interactions. Identifying ToM deficits is thus crucial to guide the clinicians in the establishment of adequate rehabilitation strategies for patients. Previous studies have demonstrated that ToM is not a unitary function yet currently there are very few standardized tests which allow identifying the type of cognitive processes affected when a patient exhibits a ToM deficit. In the current study, we present two belief reasoning tasks which have been used in previous research to disentangle two types of processes involved in belief reasoning: self-perspective inhibition and the spontaneous inference of another person’s belief. A three-step procedure was developed to provide clinicians with the tools to interpret the patients’ performances on the tasks. First, these tasks were standardized and normative data was collected on a sample of 124 healthy participants aged between 18 and 74. Data collected showed a decrease in performance as a function of age only in the task that loaded most in spontaneous other-perspective demands. There was however no effect of gender or educational level. Cut-off scores to identify deficits were then calculated for the different age groups separately. Secondly, the three-step procedure was applied to 21 brain-damaged patients and showed a large diversity of profiles, including selective deficits of the two targeted ToM processes. The diversity of profiles shows the importance to take into account the multiple facets of ToM during the diagnosis and rehabilitation of patients with suspected ToM deficits.

Cognitive and Affective Perspective-Taking: Evidence for Shared and Dissociable Anatomical Substrates

Perspective-taking refers to the ability to recognize another person's point of view. Crucial to the development of interpersonal relationships and prosocial behavior, perspective-taking is closely linked to human empathy, and like empathy, perspective-taking is commonly subdivided into cognitive and affective components. While the two components of empathy have been frequently compared, the differences between cognitive and affective perspective-taking have been under-investigated in the cognitive neuroscience literature to date. Here, we define cognitive perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's thoughts or beliefs, and affective perspective-taking as the ability to infer an agent's feelings or emotions. In this paper, we review data from functional imaging studies in healthy adults as well as behavioral and structural imaging studies in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia in order to determine if there are distinct neural correlates for cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Data suggest that there are both shared and non-shared cognitive and anatomic substrates. For example, while both types of perspective-taking engage regions such as the temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and temporal poles, only affective perspective-taking engages regions within the limbic system and basal ganglia. Differences are also observed in prefrontal cortex: while affective perspective-taking engages ventromedial prefrontal cortex, cognitive perspective-taking engages dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To corroborate these findings, we also examine if cognitive and affective perspective-taking share the same relationship with executive functions. While it is clear that affective perspective-taking requires emotional substrates that are less prominent in cognitive perspective-taking, it remains unknown to what extent executive functions (including working memory, mental set switching, and inhibitory control) may contribute to each process. Overall results indicate that cognitive perspective-taking is dependent on executive functioning (particularly mental set switching), while affective perspective-taking is less so. We conclude with a critique of the current literature, with a focus on the different outcome measures used across studies and misconceptions due to imprecise terminology, as well as recommendations for future research.

Normal Performance in Non-Visual Social Cognition Tasks in Women with Turner Syndrome

Turner syndrome (TS) is a chromosomal disorder in women resulting from a partial or complete absence of the X chromosome. In addition to physical and hormonal dysfunctions, along with a unique neurocognitive profile, women with TS are reported to suffer from social functioning difficulties. Yet, it is unclear whether these difficulties stem from impairments in social cognition per se or from other deficits that characterize TS but are not specific to social cognition. Previous research that has probed social functioning in TS is equivocal regarding the source of these psychosocial problems since they have mainly used tasks that were dependent on visual-spatial skills, which are known to be compromised in TS. In the present study, we tested 26 women with TS and 26 matched participants on three social cognition tasks that did not require any visual-spatial capacities but rather relied on auditory-verbal skills. The results revealed that in all three tasks the TS participants did not differ from their control counterparts. The same TS cohort was found, in an earlier study, to be impaired, relative to controls, in other social cognition tasks that were dependent on visual-spatial skills. Taken together these findings suggest that the social problems, documented in TS, may be related to non-specific spatial-visual factors that affect their social cognition skills.

Clinical and therapeutic role of mentalization in schizophrenia-a review

Recent empirical findings from clinical and genetic studies suggest that mentalization, a key area of social cognition, is a distinct construct, although it is closely related to the neurocognitive deficits and symptoms of schizophrenia. Mentalization contributes a great deal to impaired social functioning. Current measures often display methodological problems, and many aspects should be taken into account when assessing mentalization. Moreover, advances in cognitive and affective neurosciences have led to the development of more advanced behavioral methods to assess the relationship between cognitive functions, symptoms, and social cognition based on their underlying neural mechanisms. The development of assessment tools that better examine the neural circuitry of such relationships may lead to the development of new psychosocial and pharmacological treatments.

Emotions Are Rising: The Growing Field of Affect Neuropsychology

Thirty years ago, the neuropsychology of emotion started to emerge as a mainstream topic. Careful examination of individual patients showed that emotion, like memory, language, and so on, could be differentially affected by brain disorders, especially in the right hemisphere. Since then, there has been accelerating interest in uncovering the neural architecture of emotion, and the major steps in this process of discovery over the past 3 decades are detailed in this review. In the 1990s, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans provided precise delineation of lesions in the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, insula and somatosensory cortex as underpinning emotion disorders. At the same time, functional MRI revealed activation that was bilateral and also lateralized according to task demands. In the 2000s, converging evidence suggested at least two routes to emotional responses: subcortical, automatic and autonomic responses and slower, cortical responses mediating cognitive processing. The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s reinvigorated older views that simulation was the means to recognize emotions and empathize with others. More recently, psychophysiological research, revisiting older Russian paradigms, has contributed new insights into how autonomic and other physiological indices contribute to decision making (the somatic marker theory), emotional simulation, and social cognition. Finally, this review considers the extent to which these seismic changes in understanding emotional processes in clinical disorders have been reflected in neuropsychological practice. (JINS, 2017, 23, 719-731).

Deep Brain Stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus does not negatively affect social cognitive abilities of patients with Parkinson's disease

Bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a treatment option for patients with advanced idiopathic PD successful at alleviating disabling motor symptoms. Nevertheless, the effects of STN-DBS on cognitive functions remain controversial and few studies have investigated modification of social cognitive abilities in patients with PD treated with STN-DBS. Here we expanded the typically-investigated spectrum of these abilities by simultaneously examining emotion recognition, and both affective and cognitive Theory of Mind (ToM). By means of a cross-sectional study, 20 patients with PD under dopaminergic replacement therapy, 18 patients with PD treated with STN-DBS, and 20 healthy controls performed the Ekman 60-Faces test, the full version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, and the Protocol for the Attribution of Communicative Intentions. There were no differences between the PD groups (treated and not treated with STN-DBS) on any of the social cognitive tests. Our results suggest that patients with PD who are treated with STN-DBS do not experience detrimental effects on their social cognitive abilities. The present study, the first one examining a wide spectrum of social cognitive abilities after DBS of the STN, suggests that this surgical procedure can be considered safe from this standpoint.

Disconnection as a mechanism for social cognition impairment in multiple sclerosis

Objective:

To assess the contribution of microstructural normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) damage to social cognition impairment, specifically in the theory of mind (ToM), in multiple sclerosis (MS).

Methods:

We enrolled consecutively 60 patients with MS and 60 healthy controls (HC) matched on age, sex, and education level. All participants underwent ToM testing (Eyes Test, Videos Test) and 3T brain MRI including conventional and diffusion tensor imaging sequences. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) were applied for whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) on NAWM.

Results:

Patients with MS performed worse on both tasks of ToM compared to HC (Eyes Test 58.7 ± 13.8 vs 81.9 ± 10.4, p < 0.001, Hedges g −1.886; Videos Test 75.3 ± 9.3 vs 88.1 ± 7.1, p < 0.001, Hedges g −1.537). Performance on ToM tests was correlated with higher values of FA and lower values of MD across widespread white matter tracts. The largest effects (≥90% of voxels with statistical significance) for the Eyes Test were body and genu of corpus callosum, fornix, tapetum, uncinate fasciculus, and left inferior cerebellar peduncle, and for the Videos Test genu and splenium of corpus callosum, fornix, uncinate fasciculus, left tapetum, and right superior fronto-occipital fasciculus.

Conclusions:

These results indicate that a diffuse pattern of NAWM damage in MS contributes to social cognition impairment in the ToM domain, probably due to a mechanism of disconnection within the social brain network. Gray matter pathology is also expected to have an important role; thus further research is required to clarify the neural basis of social cognition impairment in MS.

[Is the right hemisphere really minor? Involvement in the repair of bodily injury]

An appraisal mission regarding the repair of physical injury is based on the classification of the effects of injury and scales. These scales are surprisingly incomplete concerning the symptoms due to a right hemisphere injury. However, these symptoms can cause an important handicap in numerous activities, social, affective and professional. This paper reviews the recent functional anatomic knowledge of the right hemisphere functions, visuo-spatial cognition, intentional process and social cognition. The impacts of this appraisal data, as well as suggestions for new scales, are outlined.

Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand Others

Understanding others' feelings, intentions, and beliefs is a crucial social skill both for our personal lives and for meeting the challenges of a globalized world. Recent evidence suggests that the ability to represent and infer others' mental states (Theory of Mind, ToM) can be enhanced by mental training in healthy adults. The present study investigated the role of training-induced understanding of oneself for the enhanced understanding of others. In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N = 80 and N = 81) received a 3-month contemplative training. This training focused on perspective taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model that conceives the self as being composed of a complex system of inner personality aspects. Specifically, participants practiced perspective taking on their own inner states by learning to identify and classify different inner personality parts. Results revealed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves-reflected in the number of different inner parts they could identify-predicted their improvements in high-level ToM performance over training. Especially the number of identified parts that were negatively valenced showed a strong relation with enhanced ToM capacities. This finding suggests a close link between getting better in understanding oneself and improvement in social intelligence.

Rethinking Social Cognition in Light of Psychosis: Reciprocal Implications for Cognition and Psychopathology

The positive symptoms of psychosis largely involve the experience of illusory social actors and yet our current measures of social cognition, at best, only weakly predict their presence. We review evidence to suggest that the range of current approaches in social cognition is not sufficient to explain the fundamentally social nature of these experiences. We argue that social agent representation is an important organising principle for understanding social cognition and that alterations in social agent representation may be a factor in the formation of delusions and hallucination in psychosis. We evaluate the feasibility of this approach in light of clinical and non-clinical studies, developmental research, cognitive anthropology and comparative psychology. We conclude with recommendations for empirical testing of specific hypotheses and how studies of social cognition could more fully capture the extent of social reasoning and experience in both psychosis and more prosaic mental states.

Social cognition in neuropsychiatric populations: a comparison of theory of mind in schizophrenia and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

Social cognition deficits are observed both in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). This may be due to dysfunction of the amygdala network, which is a common feature of both diseases. In this study, SCZ (n = 48) or MTLE (n = 31) and healthy controls (HC, n = 47) completed assessments of mentalising (Reading Mind in the Eyes Test, RMET) and basic cognitive processing, e.g., working memory, executive functions and psychomotor speed (Trail-Making Test B and Digit Symbol). SCZ were also assessed with the Positive And Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). We found that the RMET scores of the two clinical groups were similar (p > 0.05) and lower than in the HCs (SCZ: p < 0.05; MTLE: p < 0.001). In the next step, SCZ were split into two groups with respect to the level of symptoms. Analysis of the RMET scores revealed no differences between the HC (M = 25.7 ± 4.1) and POS-LO (M = 25.3 ± 4.8); both groups outperformed the POS-HI group (M = 21.3 ± 5.2) and the MTLE group (M = 20.8 ± 4.6). No differences were found for the median-split with regard to negative symptoms. In SCZ, the mind-reading deficit appears to be associated with the level of positive symptoms. Both POS-HI and MTLE patients present significant mentalising deficits compared to healthy controls.

Lack of Evidence That Neural Empathic Responses Are Blunted in Excessive Users of Violent Video Games: An fMRI Study

The use of violent video games has been often linked to increase of aggressive behavior. According to the General Aggression Model, one of the central mechanisms for this aggressiveness inducing impact is an emotional desensitization process resulting from long lasting repeated violent game playing. This desensitization should evidence itself in a lack of empathy. Recent research has focused primarily on acute, short term impact of violent media use but only little is known about long term effects. In this study 15 excessive users of violent games and control subjects matched for age and education viewed pictures depicting emotional and neutral situations with and without social interaction while fMRI activations were obtained. While the typical pattern of activations for empathy and theory of mind networks was seen, both groups showed no differences in brain responses. We interpret our results as evidence against the desensitization hypothesis and suggest that the impact of violent media on emotional processing may be rather acute and short-lived.

Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works

Existing theories of empathic response to visual art works postulate the primacy of automatic embodied reaction to images based on mirror neuron mechanisms. Arguing for a more inclusive concept of empathy-related response and integrating four distinct bodies of literature, we discuss contextual, and personal factors which modulate empathic response to depicted people. We then present an integrative model of empathy-related responses to depicted people in art works. The model assumes that a response to empathy-eliciting figural artworks engages the dynamic interaction of two mutually interlinked sets of processes: socio-affective/cognitive processing, related to the person perception, and esthetic processing, primarily concerned with esthetic appreciation and judgment and attention to non-social aspects of the image. The model predicts that the specific pattern of interaction between empathy-related and esthetic processing is co-determined by several sets of factors: (i) the viewer's individual characteristics, (ii) the context variables (which include various modes of priming by narratives and other images), (iii) multidimensional features of the image, and (iv) aspects of a viewer's response. Finally we propose that the model is implemented by the interaction of functionally connected brain networks involved in socio-cognitive and esthetic processing.

Emotion Perception from Face, Voice, and Touch: Comparisons and Convergence

Historically, research on emotion perception has focused on facial expressions, and findings from this modality have come to dominate our thinking about other modalities. Here we examine emotion perception through a wider lens by comparing facial with vocal and tactile processing. We review stimulus characteristics and ensuing behavioral and brain responses and show that audition and touch do not simply duplicate visual mechanisms. Each modality provides a distinct input channel and engages partly nonoverlapping neuroanatomical systems with different processing specializations (e.g., specific emotions versus affect). Moreover, processing of signals across the different modalities converges, first into multi- and later into amodal representations that enable holistic emotion judgments.

Measuring Mindreading: A Review of Behavioral Approaches to Testing Cognitive and Affective Mental State Attribution in Neurologically Typical Adults

Mindreading refers to the ability to attribute mental states, including thoughts, intentions and emotions, to oneself and others, and is essential for navigating the social world. Empirical mindreading research has predominantly featured children, groups with autism spectrum disorder and clinical samples, and many standard tasks suffer ceiling effects with neurologically typical (NT) adults. We first outline a case for studying mindreading in NT adults and proceed to review tests of emotion perception, cognitive and affective mentalizing, and multidimensional tasks combining these facets. We focus on selected examples of core experimental paradigms including emotion recognition tests, social vignettes, narrative fiction (prose and film) and participative interaction (in real and virtual worlds), highlighting challenges for studies with NT adult cohorts. We conclude that naturalistic, multidimensional approaches may be productively applied alongside traditional tasks to facilitate a more nuanced picture of mindreading in adulthood, and to ensure construct validity whilst remaining sensitive to variation at the upper echelons of the ability.

Deficits in Response Inhibition in Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: The Impaired Self-Protection System Hypothesis

Problems in inhibitory control are regarded in Psychology as a key problem associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They, however, might not be primary deficits, but instead a consequence of inattention. At least two components have been identified and dissociated in studies in regards to inhibitory control: interference suppression, responsible for controlling interference by resisting irrelevant or misleading information, and response inhibition, referring to withholding a response or overriding an ongoing behavior. Poor error awareness and self-monitoring undermine an individual's ability to inhibit inadequate responses and change course of action. In non-social contexts, an individual depends on his own cognition to regulate his mistakes. In social contexts, however, there are many social cues that should help that individual to perceive his mistakes and inhibit inadequate responses. The processes involved in perceiving and interpreting those social cues are arguably part of a self-protection system (SPS). Individuals with ADHD not only present impulsive behaviors in social contexts, but also have difficulty perceiving their inadequate responses and overriding ongoing actions toward more appropriate ones. In this paper, we discuss that those difficulties are arguably a consequence of an impaired SPS, due to visual attention deficits and subsequent failure in perceiving and recognizing accurately negative emotions in facial expressions, especially anger. We discuss evidence that children with ADHD exhibit problems in a series of components involved in the activation of that system and advocate that the inability to identify the anger expressed by others, and thus, not experiencing the fear response that should follow, is, ultimately, what prevents them from inhibiting the ongoing inappropriate behavior, since a potential threat is not registered. Getting involved in high-risk situations, such as reckless driving, could also be a consequence of not registering a threat and thus, not experiencing fear.

Age-congruency and contact effects in body expression recognition from point-light displays (PLD)

Recognition of older people’s body expressions is a crucial social skill. We here investigate how age, not just of the observer, but also of the observed individual, affects this skill. Age may influence the ability to recognize other people’s body expressions by changes in one’s own ability to perform certain action over the life-span (i.e., an own-age bias may occur, with best recognition for one’s own age). Whole body point light displays of children, young adults and older adults (>70 years) expressing six different emotions were presented to observers of the same three age-groups. Across two variations of the paradigm, no evidence for the predicted own-age bias (a cross-over interaction between one’s own age and the observed person’s age) was found. Instead, experience effects were found with children better recognizing older actors’ expressions of ‘active emotions,’ such as anger and happiness with greater exposure in daily life. Together, the findings suggest that age-related changes in one own’s mobility only influences body expression categorization in young children who interact frequently with older adults.

Why epilepsy challenges social life

Social bonds are at the center of our daily living and are an essential determinant of our quality of life. In people with epilepsy, numerous factors can impede cognitive and affective functions necessary for smooth social interactions. Psychological and psychiatric complications are common in epilepsy and may hinder the processing of social information. In addition, neuropsychological deficits such as slowed processing speed, memory loss or attentional difficulties may interfere with enjoyable reciprocity of social interactions. We consider societal, psychological, and neuropsychological aspects of social life with particular emphasis on socio-cognitive functions in temporal lobe epilepsy. Deficits in emotion recognition and theory of mind, two main aspects of social cognition, are frequently observed in individuals with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Results from behavioural studies targeting these functions will be presented with a focus on their relevance for patients' daily life. Furthermore, we will broach the issue of pitfalls in current diagnostic tools and potential directions for future research. By giving a broad overview of individual and interpersonal determinants of social functioning in epilepsy, we hope to provide a basis for future research to establish social cognition as a key component in the comprehensive assessment and care of those with epilepsy.

Empatia e reconhecimento de expressões faciais de emoções básicas e complexas em estudantes de Medicina

RESUMO Objetivo Avaliar a empatia e a capacidade de reconhecimento de emoções básicas e complexas e suas correlações em estudantes de Medicina. Métodos O desenho do estudo foi transversal. Foram avaliados 86 alunos do 3º e 4º ano do curso de Medicina de uma faculdade de Medicina do interior do estado de São Paulo com os seguintes instrumentos: (i) escala Jefferson de empatia, (ii) tarefa de Reconhecimento de Expressões Faciais de emoções básicas (REF) e (iii) Reading the mind in the eyes test (RMEt). Resultados A média geral de acertos no REF foi 15,6 (DP: ±2,3). Houve diferença estatisticamente significante no número de acertos da emoção tristeza no sexo feminino comparado com o masculino (t84 = 2,30; p = 0,02). Em relação ao RMEt, a média geral de acertos foi de 26,5 (DP: ±3,3) com diferença estatisticamente significante entre os gêneros com maior número de acertos entre as estudantes do sexo feminino (t84 = 3,43; p < 0,01). O escore total médio na escala de empatia foi 121,3 (DP: ±9,8). Houve correlação positiva fraca entre o escore total da escala de empatia e o número de acertos para a emoção tristeza (r = 0,29; p < 0,01). Conclusão O número de acertos para a emoção tristeza no REF e o escore total do RMEt foi maior no sexo feminino comparado com sexo masculino. Além disso, a empatia parece estar diretamente relacionada com a capacidade de reconhecer a emoção tristeza. Outros estudos parecem pertinentes para avaliar de forma mais profunda aspectos de empatia e reconhecimento de expressões faciais da emoção em estudantes de medicina.

Face perception in women with Turner syndrome and its underlying factors

Turner syndrome (TS) is a chromosomal condition that affects development in females. It is characterized by short stature, ovarian failure and other congenital malformations, due to a partial or complete absence of the sex chromosome. Women with TS frequently suffer from various physical and hormonal dysfunctions, along with impairments in visual-spatial processing and social cognition difficulties. Previous research has also shown difficulties in face and emotion perception. In the current study we examined two questions: First, whether women with TS, that are impaired in face perception, also suffer from deficits in face-specific processes. The second question was whether these face impairments in TS are related to visual-spatial perceptual dysfunctions exhibited by TS individuals, or to impaired social cognition skills. Twenty-six women with TS and 26 control participants were tested on various cognitive and psychological tests to assess visual-spatial perception, face and facial expression perception, and social cognition skills. Results show that women with TS were less accurate in face perception and facial expression processing, yet they exhibited normal face-specific processes (configural and holistic processing). They also showed difficulties in spatial perception and social cognition capacities. Additional analyses revealed that their face perception impairments were related to their deficits in visual-spatial processing. Thus, our results do not support the claim that the impairments in face processing observed in TS are related to difficulties in social cognition. Rather, our data point to the possibility that face perception difficulties in TS stem from visual-spatial impairments and may not be specific to faces.

Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds

Fiction is the simulation of selves in interaction. People who read it improve their understanding of others. This effect is especially marked with literary fiction, which also enables people to change themselves. These effects are due partly to the process of engagement in stories, which includes making inferences and becoming emotionally involved, and partly to the contents of fiction, which include complex characters and circumstances that we might not encounter in daily life. Fiction can be thought of as a form of consciousness of selves and others that can be passed from an author to a reader or spectator, and can be internalized to augment everyday cognition.

Emotion processing in Parkinson's disease: a three-level study on recognition, representation, and regulation

BACKGROUND

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by well-known motor symptoms, whereas the presence of cognitive non-motor symptoms, such as emotional disturbances, is still underestimated. One of the major problems in studying emotion deficits in PD is an atomising approach that does not take into account different levels of emotion elaboration. Our study addressed the question of whether people with PD exhibit difficulties in one or more specific dimensions of emotion processing, investigating three different levels of analyses, that is, recognition, representation, and regulation.

METHODOLOGY

Thirty-two consecutive medicated patients with PD and 25 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Participants performed a three-level analysis assessment of emotional processing using quantitative standardised emotional tasks: the Ekman 60-Faces for emotion recognition, the full 36-item version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) for emotion representation, and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) for emotion regulation.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

Regarding emotion recognition, patients obtained significantly worse scores than controls in the total score of Ekman 60-Faces but not in any other basic emotions. For emotion representation, patients obtained significantly worse scores than controls in the RME experimental score but no in the RME gender control task. Finally, on emotion regulation, PD and controls did not perform differently at TAS-20 and no specific differences were found on TAS-20 subscales. The PD impairments on emotion recognition and representation do not correlate with dopamine therapy, disease severity, or with the duration of illness. These results are independent from other cognitive processes, such as global cognitive status and executive function, or from psychiatric status, such as depression, anxiety or apathy.

CONCLUSIONS

These results may contribute to better understanding of the emotional problems that are often seen in patients with PD and the measures used to test these problems, in particular on the use of different versions of the RME task.

Neural correlates of gratitude

Gratitude is an important aspect of human sociality, and is valued by religions and moral philosophies. It has been established that gratitude leads to benefits for both mental health and interpersonal relationships. It is thus important to elucidate the neurobiological correlates of gratitude, which are only now beginning to be investigated. To this end, we conducted an experiment during which we induced gratitude in participants while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. We hypothesized that gratitude ratings would correlate with activity in brain regions associated with moral cognition, value judgment and theory of mind. The stimuli used to elicit gratitude were drawn from stories of survivors of the Holocaust, as many survivors report being sheltered by strangers or receiving lifesaving food and clothing, and having strong feelings of gratitude for such gifts. The participants were asked to place themselves in the context of the Holocaust and imagine what their own experience would feel like if they received such gifts. For each gift, they rated how grateful they felt. The results revealed that ratings of gratitude correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, in support of our hypotheses. The results provide a window into the brain circuitry for moral cognition and positive emotion that accompanies the experience of benefitting from the goodwill of others.

Magical ideation associated social cognition in adolescents: signs of a negative facial affect recognition deficit

BACKGROUND

Studies provide evidence for impaired social cognition in schizotypy and its association with negative symptoms. Cognitive features related to magical ideation - a component of the positive dimension of schizotypy - have been less investigated. We aimed to assess social cognitive functioning among adolescents with high magical ideation scores, mainly focusing on face and emotion recognition.

METHODS

22 subjects with magical ideation scale scores above the cut off level and 22 controls with lowest scores from among 250 students screened with this scale were included in the study. A face and emotion recognition n-back test, the empathy quotient, theory of mind tests and the Physical Anhedonia Scale were applied to both magical ideation and control groups.

RESULTS

The magical ideation group performed significantly worse than controls on both face and emotion recognition tests. Emotion recognition performance was found to be affected by memory load, with sadness, among emotions, revealing a difference between the two groups. Empathy and theory of mind tests did not distinguish the magical ideation group from controls.

CONCLUSION

Our findings provide evidence for a deficit in negative emotion recognition affected by memory load associated with magical ideation in adolescents.

Emotion processing in Parkinson's disease: a three-level study on recognition, representation, and regulation

BACKGROUND

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by well-known motor symptoms, whereas the presence of cognitive non-motor symptoms, such as emotional disturbances, is still underestimated. One of the major problems in studying emotion deficits in PD is an atomising approach that does not take into account different levels of emotion elaboration. Our study addressed the question of whether people with PD exhibit difficulties in one or more specific dimensions of emotion processing, investigating three different levels of analyses, that is, recognition, representation, and regulation.

METHODOLOGY

Thirty-two consecutive medicated patients with PD and 25 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Participants performed a three-level analysis assessment of emotional processing using quantitative standardised emotional tasks: the Ekman 60-Faces for emotion recognition, the full 36-item version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) for emotion representation, and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) for emotion regulation.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

Regarding emotion recognition, patients obtained significantly worse scores than controls in the total score of Ekman 60-Faces but not in any other basic emotions. For emotion representation, patients obtained significantly worse scores than controls in the RME experimental score but no in the RME gender control task. Finally, on emotion regulation, PD and controls did not perform differently at TAS-20 and no specific differences were found on TAS-20 subscales. The PD impairments on emotion recognition and representation do not correlate with dopamine therapy, disease severity, or with the duration of illness. These results are independent from other cognitive processes, such as global cognitive status and executive function, or from psychiatric status, such as depression, anxiety or apathy.

CONCLUSIONS

These results may contribute to better understanding of the emotional problems that are often seen in patients with PD and the measures used to test these problems, in particular on the use of different versions of the RME task.

Theory of Mind in Bipolar Disorder, with Comparison to the Impairments Observed in Schizophrenia

Our ability to make sense of information on the potential intentions and dispositions of others is of paramount importance for understanding their communicative intent, and for judging what an appropriate reaction might be. Thus, anything that impinges on this ability has the potential to cause significant social impairment, and compromise an individual's level of functioning. Both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are known to feature theory of mind impairment. We conducted a theoretical review to determine the extent and types of theory of mind impairment in bipolar disorder, and evaluate their relationship to medication and symptoms. We also considered possible mediatory mechanisms, and set out to discover what else could be learnt about the impairment in bipolar disorder by comparison to the profile of impairment in schizophrenia. The literature established that in bipolar disorder (i) some form of theory of mind impairment has been observed in all mood states, including euthymia, (ii) the form of theory of mind assessed and task used to make the assessment influence the impairment observed, and (iii) there might be some relationship to cognitive impairment, although a relationship to standard clinical variables was harder to establish. What also became clear in the literature on bipolar disorder itself was the possible relationship of theory of mind impairment to history of psychotic symptoms. Direct comparative studies, including patients with schizophrenia, were thus examined, and provided several important directions for future research on the bases of impairment in bipolar disorder. Particularly prominent was the issue of whether theory of mind impairment could be considered a candidate endophenotype for the psychoses, although current evidence suggests that this may be premature. The differences in impairment across schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may, however, have genuine differential effects on social functioning and the likely success of remediation.