Lesions in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex and their Impact on Social Cognition / Lesiones en la Corteza Prefrontal Ventromedial y su Impacto en la Cognición Social

Abstract Aims: To identify the impact of ventromedial prefrontal cortex injury (vmPFc) on social cognition (SC) processes in a stroke patient in relation to a control group matched by age, gender, and schooling. Possible associations between post-injury behavior and impacted neuropsychological attributes of emotion recognition, Theory of Mind (TOM), and empathy are discussed. Method: One male patient (n = 1) (58 years old) with stroke in right vmpFC and 10 healthy participants completed different screening, neuropsychological assessment, and SC tests as: Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-Revised; The Trail Making Test; Raven's Matrices; Faux Pas Test; Reading Mind in the Eyes Test, among others. Results: Due single cases are reported, p< .05 values of a tail were considered statistically significant in all comparisons. Correlations were found between damage in vmPFC and alterations in affective TOM, working and retrograde memory, mood and relational alterations in the patient. Discrepancies were found with respect to other studies in relation to the laterality of the injury and the impact of cognitive and affective empathy that seems to be relatively intact. Conclusions: There is a need to clarify the role of affective TOM after acquired brain injury (ABI) in vmPFC. A protocol is needed to assess and intervene in aspects of TOM that would involve documenting strengths and deficits of TOM: inter and intrapersonal after an ABI. Similarly, there is a need to address the lateralization of different domains of function in vmPFC and their relationship to affective TOM.

Resumen Objetivo: Identificar el impacto de la lesión en la corteza prefrontal ventromedial (vmPFC por sus siglas en inglés) en los procesos de cognición social (SC por sus siglas en inglés) a un paciente con accidente cerebrovascular (ACV) en rela-ción a un grupo control pareado por edad, gènero y escolaridad. Se discuten las posibles asociaciones entre el comporta-miento posterior a la lesión y los atributos neuropsicológicos impactados de reconocimiento de emociones, Teoria de la Mente (TOM por sus siglas en inglés) y empatia. Método: Un paciente con ACV en el vmPFC derecho y 10 participantes sanos completaron diferentes pruebas de screening, evaluación neuropsicológica y SC. Resultados: Se encontraron correlaciones entre el dano en vmPFC y alteraciones en la TOM afectiva, memoria de trabajo y retrógrada, alteraciones animicas y relacionales en el paciente. Se hallaron discrepancias frente a otros estudios en relación con la lateralidad de la lesión y al impacto de la empatia cognitiva y afectiva la cual parece estar relativamente intacta. Conclusiones: Se requiere aclarar el panorama frente al deterioro de la TOM afectiva despuès de una lesión cerebral adquirida (ABI por sus siglas en inglés) en vmPFC. Se necesita un protocolo para evaluar e intervenir en aspectos de la TOM que involucraria documentar fortalezas y déficits de TOM: inter e intrapersonal despuès de un ABI. De igual manera, se requiere abordar la lateralización de diferentes dominios de la función en vmPFC y su relación con la TOM afectiva.

Neurodevelopmental Changes in Social Reinforcement Processing: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

OBJECTIVE: In the current study we investigated neurodevelopmental changes in response to social and non-social reinforcement. METHODS: Fifty-three healthy participants including 16 early adolescents (age, 10–15 years), 16 late adolescents (age, 15–18 years), and 21 young adults (age, 21–25 years) completed a social/non-social reward learning task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants responded to fractal image stimuli and received social or non-social reward/non-rewards according to their accuracy. ANOVAs were conducted on both the blood oxygen level dependent response data and the product of a context-dependent psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analysis involving ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and bilateral insula cortices as seed regions. RESULTS: Early adolescents showed significantly increased activation in the amygdala and anterior insula cortex in response to non-social monetary rewards relative to both social reward/non-reward and monetary non-rewards compared to late adolescents and young adults. In addition, early adolescents showed significantly more positive connectivity between the vmPFC/bilateral insula cortices seeds and other regions implicated in reinforcement processing (the amygdala, posterior cingulate cortex, insula cortex, and lentiform nucleus) in response to non-reward and especially social non-reward, compared to late adolescents and young adults. CONCLUSION: It appears that early adolescence may be marked by: (i) a selective increase in responsiveness to non-social, relative to social, rewards; and (ii) enhanced, integrated functioning of reinforcement circuitry for non-reward, and in particular, with respect to posterior cingulate and insula cortices, for social non-reward.

Advances in psychopathic individuals' moral judgments and the underlying neural mechanisms / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective To review psychopathic individuals' moral judgments and the underlying neural mechanisms in order to provide cognitive basis and the corresponding intervention for their socially deviant behavior.Methods Literatures were searched in Academic Search Premier,Science Direct,Highwire,PubMed and Wanfang database by July 2015.Index strategy:AB [psychopathy OR psychopathic] AND AB [moral judgments OR moral reasoning].Forty-seven articles including six in Chinese were chosen based on their abstracts and key words.Results 33 papers were adopted finally including 2 in Chinese.Most of the papers involved representative empirical studies within five years.Conclusion Compared with non-psychopathic individuals,psychopathic individuals are inclined to consider moral transgressions as more acceptable and are more inclined to make utilitarian moral judgments.Their impairment in moral judgments is associated with dysfunction in specific brain regions such as amygdale,dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,and ventromedial prefrontal cortex,and dysfunction in the basic brain system.Psychopathic individuals' moral judgment impairment needs to be examined within the frame of affect and their moral reasoning processes should be investigated in the future.