I'm looking through you: Mentalizing in frontotemporal dementia and progressive supranuclear palsy

short version of Social and Emotional Assessment (Mini-SEA), which is composed of a facial emotion recognition test (FERT) and the faux pas test. Two components of the faux pas test were distinguished: a score assessing the recognition of social norms violation and a score assessing mentalizing. Compared to controls, bvFTD and PSP patients had signifi-cantly reduced scores in all tests of social cognition but did not differ on these measures. PSP and bvFTD had cerebral atrophy in critical regions for social cognition processes, when compared to controls. The cortical correlates of emotion recognition partially overlapped in bvFTD and PSP, with correlations retrieved within the frontal medial cortex, cingulate, insula and limbic structures. PSP and bvFTD patients also displayed similar patterns of brain correlations for the composite score of social norms, with a significant cluster in anterior temporal lobes. Mentalizing scores were associated with frontal and temporal poles bilaterally, in both bvFTD and PSP. These findings support previous observations that PSP patients exhibit impairment in complex cognitive abilities, such as mentalizing. Moreover, these data extend previous findings showing that PSP and bvFTD share key clinical, cognitive and neuroimaging features.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study used a simplified version of the Social and Emotional Assessment (Mini-SEA) to evaluate the social cognition abilities of patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). The results revealed significant impairments in social cognition and brain changes in these two conditions compared to controls. Additionally, similar neural patterns were observed in PSP and bvFTD patients, suggesting shared clinical, cognitive, and neuroimaging features.