Background: Social cognition is critically compromised across neurodegenerative diseases, including the behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, no previous study has used social cognition and other cognitive tasks to predict diagnoses of these conditions, let alone reporting the brain correlates of prediction outcomes. Objective: We performed a diagnostic classification analysis using social cognition, cognitive screening (CS), and executive function (EF) measures, and explored which anatomical and functional networks were associated with main predictors. Methods: Multiple group discriminant function analyses (MDAs) and ROC analyses of social cognition (facial emotional recognition, theory of mind), CS, and EF were implemented in 223 participants (bvFTD, AD, PD, controls). Gray matter volume and functional connectivity correlates of top discriminant scores were investigated. Results: Although all patient groups revealed deficits in social cognition, CS, and EF, our classification approach provided robust discriminatory characterizations. Regarding controls, probabilistic social cognition outcomes provided the best characterization for bvFTD (together with CS) and PD, but not AD (for which CS alone was the best predictor). Within patient groups, the best MDA probabilities scores yielded high classification rates for bvFTD versus PD (98.3% , social cognition), AD versus PD (98.6% , social cognition + CS), and bvFTD versus AD (71.7% , social cognition + CS). Top MDA scores were associated with specific patterns of atrophy and functional networks across neurodegenerative conditions. Conclusion: Standardized validated measures of social cognition, in combination with cognitive screening, can provide a dimensional classification with specific pathophysiological markers of neurodegeneration diagnoses.

<p style="text-align: justify;">El objetivo de la siguiente investigación fue estudiar la prevalencia de la depresión en una población infantil del oriente antioqueño. Muestra: 768 sujetos entre los 8 y los 12 años, de los cuales 379 eran de género masculino y 389 de género femenino residentes en el municipio de La Ceja (Antioquia). Los instrumentos que se utilizaron fueron Children Depresión Inventory (CDI) versión en español de la escala original de Kovacs (1992) de Davanzo y cols. (2004). Se encontró una media de depresión en la escala total de 10,52 y una desvaloración estándar de 5,61. La prevalencia de sintomatología depresiva encontrada fue de un 25.2% de la muestra investigada utilizando como punto de corte puntajes superiores a los 17 puntos. Esto evidencia que es alta la sintomatología depresiva encontrada en niños escolares del oriente antioqueño; se necesita mayor atención e investigación en esta población.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Palabras clave: </strong>CDI, depresión infantil, Antioquia, Colombia.</p>

Frontostriatal disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), are characterized by progressive disruption of cortico-subcortical dopaminergic loops involved in diverse higher-order domains, including language. Indeed, syntactic and emotional language tasks have emerged as potential biomarkers of frontostriatal disturbances. However, relevant studies and models have typically considered these linguistic dimensions in isolation, overlooking the potential advantages of targeting multidimensional markers. Here, we examined whether patient classification can be improved through the joint assessment of both dimensions using sentential stimuli. We evaluated 31 early PD patients and 24 healthy controls via two syntactic measures (functional-role assignment, parsing of long-distance dependencies) and a verbal task tapping social emotions (envy, Schadenfreude) and compared their classification accuracy when analyzed in isolation and in combination. Complementarily, we replicated our approach to discriminate between patients on and off medication. Results showed that specific measures of each dimension were selectively impaired in PD. In particular, joint analysis of outcomes in functional-role assignment and Schadenfreude improved the classification accuracy of patients and controls, irrespective of their overall cognitive and affective state. These results suggest that multidimensional linguistic assessments may better capture the complexity and multi-functional impact of frontostriatal disruptions, highlighting their potential contributions in the ongoing quest for sensitive markers of PD.

Humans have developed specific abilities to interact efficiently with their conspecifics (social cognition). Despite abundant behavioral and neuroscientific research, the influence of cultural factors on these skills remains poorly understood. This issue is of particular importance as most cognitive tasks are developed in highly specific contexts, not representative of what is encountered by the world’s population. Through a large international and multi-site study, we assessed core social cognition aspects using current gold-standard tasks in 587 participants from 12 countries. Age, gender, and education were found to impact emotion recognition as well as the ability to infer mental states. After controlling for these factors, differences between countries accounted for more than 20% of the variance on both abilities. Importantly, it was possible to isolate cultural from linguistic impacts, which classically constitute a major limitation. We suggest important methodological shifts to better represent social cognition at the fundamental and the clinical levels.

Imagen corporal (IC) y estrategias de afrontamiento (EA): Análisis de las características médico quirúrgicas en mujeres con diagnóstico de cáncer de mama Body image (BI) and coping strategies (CS): Analysis of medical and surgical characteristics in women diagnosed with breast cancer