Beyond the simplicity of theory of mind deficit in multiple sclerosis: from kinetic perception to socio-emotional abstraction and mentalizing.

BACKGROUND: Theory of Mind (ToM) processing in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is still poorly understood due to the difficulty of most tasks in qualifying the mentalizing deficit net of cognitive load. METHODS: In this study, we administered the New False Belief Animation Task (NFBAT) to 50 MS and 33 healthy controls (HC) to investigate spontaneous mentalizing in ToM and goal-directed interactions. The global cognitive level was assessed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). NFBAT appropriateness and intentionality scores were computed to investigate the ToM accuracy and intentionality attribution difficulties. NFBAT answers were qualitatively analyzed and categorized into kinetically and socially coherent/not coherent responses to test a low-level perceptual deficit. RESULTS: The main result showed dysfunctional mentalizing reasoning in MS compared to HC in the NFBAT Intentionality score in ToM conditions (p = 0.028, d = 0.501), while the two groups were equally proficient in mentalization accuracy. The Intentionality underperformance in MS was related to social low-level perceptual processing (ß =0.06, p < 0.001) and visuospatial functions (ß =0.05, p =0.002). A predictive role of memory and executive functions on NFBAT Intentionality scores was not observed. CONCLUSION: These results strengthen the hypothesis that ToM in MS is likely related to low-level social processing.

Social Inferences in Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and Autism: Semantic Analysis and Topic Modeling.

Impoverished capacity for social inference is one of several symptoms that are common to both agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This research compared the ability of 14 adults with AgCC, 13 high-functioning adults with ASD and 14 neurotypical controls to accurately attribute social meaning to the interactions of animated triangles. Descriptions of the animations were analyzed in three ways: subjective ratings, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, and topic modeling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation). Although subjective ratings indicated that all groups made similar inferences from the animations, the index of perplexity (atypicality of topic) generated from topic modeling revealed that inferences from individuals with AgCC or ASD displayed significantly less social imagination than those of controls.

A new semi-nonverbal task glance, moderate role of cognitive flexibility in ADHD children's theory of mind.

Introduction: Studies have documented both executive functions (EF) impairment in children with Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) and Theory of Mind (ToM), yielding mixed results, possibly because of a variety of tasks used, all requiring different levels of language skills.Aim: To investigate the relationship between ToM and EF with non-language-based tasks.Methods: Thirty ADHD (7-9 years old) were compared to thirty controls (age and IQ matched). Participants' ToM was assessed using the Animated Triangles task and two EF tasks, namely spatial control test, the Stockings Of Cambridge (SOC) and rule and acquisition test, the Intra-Extra Dimensional set shift (IED)-from the neuropsychological battery of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB).Results: ADHD group had a significant ToM and EF impairment relative to the control group. ToM was not significantly correlated with EF; however, the performance on IED tasks affected the performance on ToM tasks.Discussion: The study provides evidence for a link between the abilities to attribute correct mental states to others, planning and shifting attention in ADHD children, suggesting the ability to rely on cognitive flexibility in the face of a changing environment plays a role in explaining the association between ToM and EF.

Anthropomorphizing without Social Cues Requires the Basolateral Amygdala.

Anthropomorphism, the attribution of distinctively human mental characteristics to nonhuman animals and objects, illustrates the human propensity for extending social cognition beyond typical social targets. Yet, its processing components remain challenging to study because they are typically all engaged simultaneously. Across one pilot study and one focal study, we tested three rare people with basolateral amygdala lesions to dissociate two specific processing components: those triggered by attention to social cues (e.g., seeing a face) and those triggered by endogenous semantic knowledge (e.g., imbuing a machine with animacy). A pilot study demonstrated that, like neurologically intact control group participants, the three amygdala-damaged participants produced anthropomorphic descriptions for highly socially salient stimuli but not for stimuli lacking clear social cues. A focal study found that the three amygdala participants could anthropomorphize animate and living entities normally, but anthropomorphized inanimate stimuli less than control participants. Our findings suggest that the amygdala contributes to how we anthropomorphize stimuli that are not explicitly social.

Primary somatosensory cortex discriminates affective significance in social touch.

Another person's caress is one of the most powerful of all emotional social signals. How much the primary somatosensory cortices (SIs) participate in processing the pleasantness of such social touch remains unclear. Although ample empirical evidence supports the role of the insula in affective processing of touch, here we argue that SI might be more involved in affective processing than previously thought by showing that the response in SI to a sensual caress is modified by the perceived sex of the caresser. In a functional MRI study, we manipulated the perceived affective quality of a caress independently of the sensory properties at the skin: heterosexual males believed they were sensually caressed by either a man or woman, although the caress was in fact invariantly delivered by a female blind to condition type. Independent analyses showed that SI encoded, and was modulated by, the visual sex of the caress, and that this effect is unlikely to originate from the insula. This suggests that current models may underestimate the role played by SI in the affective processing of social touch.

Amygdala damage impairs eye contact during conversations with real people.

The role of the human amygdala in real social interactions remains essentially unknown, although studies in nonhuman primates and studies using photographs and video in humans have shown it to be critical for emotional processing and suggest its importance for social cognition. We show here that complete amygdala lesions result in a severe reduction in direct eye contact during conversations with real people, together with an abnormal increase in gaze to the mouth. These novel findings from real social interactions are consistent with an hypothesized role for the amygdala in autism and the approach taken here opens up new directions for quantifying social behavior in humans.

Discrete and analogue quantity processing in the parietal lobe: a functional MRI study.

The human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is implicated in processing symbolic number information and possibly in nonsymbolic number information. Specific IPS activity for discrete quantities (numerosities) as compared with continuous, analogue quantity has not been demonstrated. Here we use a stimulus-driven paradigm to distinguish automatic estimation of "how many things" from "how much" and "how long." The discrete analogue response task (DART) uses the perception of hues which can change either abruptly (discrete, numerous stimuli) or smoothly (analogue, nonnumerous stimuli) in space or in time. Subjects decide whether they saw more green or more blue. A conjunction analysis of spatial and temporal conditions revealed that bilateral IPS was significantly more active during the processing of discrete stimuli than during analogue stimuli, as was a parietal-occipital transition zone. We suggest that processing numerosity is a distinct process from processing analogue quantity, whether extended in space or time, and that an intraparietal network connects objects' segmentation to the estimation of their numerosity.

Understanding emotions from standardized facial expressions in autism and normal development.

The study investigated the recognition of standardized facial expressions of emotion (anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise) at a perceptual level (experiment 1) and at a semantic level (experiments 2 and 3) in children with autism (N = 20) and normally developing children (N = 20). Results revealed that children with autism were as able as controls to recognize all six emotions with different intensity levels, and that they made the same type of errors. These negative findings are discussed in relation to (1) previous data showing specific impairment in autism in recognizing the belief-based expression of surprise, (2) previous data showing specific impairment in autism in recognizing fear, and (3) the convergence of findings that individuals with autism, like patients with amygdala damage, pass a basic emotions recognition test but fail to recognize more complex stimuli involving the perception of faces or part of faces.

The impact of extensive medial frontal lobe damage on 'Theory of Mind' and cognition.

The ability of humans to predict and explain other people's behaviour by attributing to them independent mental states, such as desires and beliefs, is considered to be due to our ability to construct a 'Theory of Mind'. Recently, several neuroimaging studies have implicated the medial frontal lobes as playing a critical role in a dedicated 'mentalizing' or 'Theory of Mind' network in human brains. Here, we report a patient, G.T., who suffered an exceptionally rare form of stroke-bilateral anterior cerebral artery infarction, without rupture or the complications associated with anterior communicating artery aneurysms. Detailed high-resolution neuroanatomical investigations revealed extensive damage to the medial frontal lobes bilaterally, including regions identified to be critical for 'Theory of Mind' by functional neuroimaging of healthy human subjects. For the first time in such a patient, we carried out a thorough assessment of her cognitive profile including, critically, an experimental investigation of her performance on a range of tests of 'Theory of Mind'. G.T. had a dysexecutive syndrome characterized by impairments in planning and memory, as well as a tendency to confabulate. Importantly, however, she did not have any significant impairment on tasks probing her ability to construct a 'Theory of Mind', demonstrating that the extensive medial frontal regions destroyed by her stroke are not necessary for this function. These findings have important implications for the functional anatomy of 'Theory of Mind', as well as our understanding of medial frontal function. Possible reasons for the discrepancies between our results and neuroimaging studies are discussed. We conclude that our findings urge caution against using functional imaging as the sole method of establishing cognitive neuroanatomy.

Autism, Asperger syndrome and brain mechanisms for the attribution of mental states to animated shapes.

Ten able adults with autism or Asperger syndrome and 10 normal volunteers were PET scanned while watching animated sequences. The animations depicted two triangles moving about on a screen in three different conditions: moving randomly, moving in a goal-directed fashion (chasing, fighting), and moving interactively with implied intentions (coaxing, tricking). The last condition frequently elicited descriptions in terms of mental states that viewers attributed to the triangles (mentalizing). The autism group gave fewer and less accurate descriptions of these latter animations, but equally accurate descriptions of the other animations compared with controls. While viewing animations that elicited mentalizing, in contrast to randomly moving shapes, the normal group showed increased activation in a previously identified mentalizing network (medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus at the temporo-parietal junction and temporal poles). The autism group showed less activation than the normal group in all these regions. However, one additional region, extrastriate cortex, which was highly active when watching animations that elicited mentalizing, showed the same amount of increased activation in both groups. In the autism group this extrastriate region showed reduced functional connectivity with the superior temporal sulcus at the temporo-parietal junction, an area associated with the processing of biological motion as well as with mentalizing. This finding suggests a physiological cause for the mentalizing dysfunction in autism: a bottleneck in the interaction between higher order and lower order perceptual processes.