A novel task assessing intention and emotion attribution: Italian standardization and normative data of the Story-based Empathy Task

Dodich, Alessandra; Cerami, Chiara; Canessa, Nicola; Crespi, Chiara; Iannaccone, Sandro; Marcone, Alessandra; Realmuto, Sabrina; Lettieri, Giada; Perani, Daniela; Cappa, Stefano F.

doi:10.1007/s10072-015-2281-3

Cited by 94 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Moreover, such deficits are critical predictors of functional outcomes because they affect the ability to form and sustain interpersonal relationships, thereby eliminating the benefits that interactions have for patients or at‐risk individuals (Steptoe, Shankar, Demakakos, & Wardle, ). An advancement of knowledge on the neural bases of social cognition is thus crucial in several respects, including the development of novel tools for assessing related abilities in pathological conditions (e.g., Dodich et al, , ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural processing of social interaction: Coordinate‐based meta‐analytic evidence from human neuroimaging studies

Arioli

Canessa

2019

Human Brain Mapping

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While the action observation and mentalizing networks are considered to play complementary roles in understanding others' goals and intentions, they might be concurrently engaged when processing social interactions. We assessed this hypothesis via three activation‐likelihood‐estimation meta‐analyses of neuroimaging studies on the neural processing of: (a) social interactions, (b) individual actions by the action observation network, and (c) mental states by the mentalizing network. Conjunction analyses and direct comparisons unveiled overlapping and specific regions among the resulting maps. We report quantitative meta‐analytic evidence for a “social interaction network” including key nodes of the action observation and mentalizing networks. An action–social interaction‐mentalizing gradient of activity along the posterior temporal cortex highlighted a hierarchical processing of interactions, from visuomotor analyses decoding individual and shared intentions to in‐depth inferences on actors' intentional states. The medial prefrontal cortex, possibly in conjunction with the amygdala, might provide additional information concerning the affective valence of the interaction. This evidence suggests that the functional architecture underlying the neural processing of interactions involves the joint involvement of the action observation and mentalizing networks. These data might inform the design of rehabilitative treatments for social cognition disorders in pathological conditions, and the assessment of their outcome in randomized controlled trials.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural processing of social interaction: Coordinate‐based meta‐analytic evidence from human neuroimaging studies

Arioli

Canessa

2019

Human Brain Mapping

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“…Our findings remark that an impairment of both subcomponents of ToM, especially of the affective one, explored by both EAT and ET, might be considered as an extra-motor symptom occurring since the early stages of ALS, allowing to speculate that these poor performances may reflect mainly an early medial and orbital prefrontal cortex dysfunction, as also shown in early clinical stages of frontal lobe degeneration in both ALS (Van der Hulst et al, 2015) and bvFTD (Torralva et al, 2015). However, despite the large amount of literature investigating the behavioral and neural bases of mentalizing abilities in neurological conditions, there is still a lack of validated neuropsychological tools specifically designed to assess each ToM subcomponent (Dodich et al, 2015; Schaafsma et al, 2015). To note, among the experimental approaches used in neurological disorders, not all investigations on ALS aimed to assess both cognitive and affective subcomponents of ToM (Girardi et al, 2011; Carluer et al, 2015) and some authors explored mainly the affective subcomponent using non-verbal tasks, based on visual emotion recognition (such as ET or preference judgment task or false-belief task; Cavallo et al, 2011; Girardi et al, 2011; Crespi et al, 2014; Carluer et al, 2015; Van der Hulst et al, 2015; Burke et al, 2016a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory of Mind and Its Neuropsychological and Quality of Life Correlates in the Early Stages of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

et al. 2016

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This study aims to explore the potential impairment of Theory of Mind (ToM; i.e., the ability to represent cognitive and affective mental states to both self and others) and the clinical, neuropsychological and Quality of Life (QoL) correlates of these cognitive abnormalities in the early stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a multisystem neurodegenerative disease recently recognized as a part of the same clinical and pathological spectrum of frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Twenty-two consecutive, cognitively intact ALS patients, and 15 healthy controls, underwent assessment of executive, verbal comprehension, visuospatial, behavioral, and QoL measures, as well as of the ToM abilities by Emotion Attribution Task (EAT), Advanced Test of ToM (ATT), and Eyes Task (ET). ALS patients obtained significantly lower scores than controls on EAT and ET. No significant difference was found between the two groups on ATT. As regard to type of ALS onset, patients with bulbar onset performed worse than those with spinal onset on ET. Correlation analysis revealed that EAT and ET were positively correlated with education, memory prose, visuo-spatial performances, and “Mental Health” scores among QoL items. Our results suggest that not only “cognitive” but also “affective” subcomponents of ToM may be impaired in the early stages of ALS, with significant linkage to disease onset and dysfunctions of less executively demanding conditions, causing potential impact on patients’ “Mental Health.”

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“…Standardized measures of socio-emotional abilities (i.e., Ekman-60-Faces Test [28] and Story-based Empathy Task [29]) were also included in the cognitive assessment of a sub-set of PPA patients ( n = 18, 32%).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Single-Subject Brain Metabolic Patterns in the Early Differential Diagnosis of Primary Progressive Aphasias and in Prediction of Progression to Dementia

Cerami

Dodich

Greco

et al. 2016

JAD

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Background and Objective: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical syndrome due to different neurodegenerative conditions in which an accurate early diagnosis needs to be supported by a reliable diagnostic tool at the individual level. In this study, we investigated in PPA the FDG-PET brain metabolic patterns at the single-subject level, in order to assess the case-to-case variability and its relationship with clinical-neuropsychological findings.Material and Methods: 55 patients (i.e., 11 semantic variant/sv-PPA, 19 non fluent variant/nfv-PPA, 17 logopenic variant/lv-PPA, 3 slowly progressive anarthria/SPA, and 5 mixed PPA/m-PPA) were included. Clinical-neuropsychological information and FDG-PET data were acquired at baseline. A follow-up of 27.4±12.55 months evaluated the clinical progression. Brain metabolism was analyzed using an optimized and validated voxel-based SPM method at the single-subject level.Results: FDG-PET voxel-wise metabolic assessment revealed specific metabolic signatures characterizing each PPA variant at the individual level, reflecting the underlying neurodegeneration in language networks. Notably, additional dysfunctional patterns predicted clinical progression to specific dementia conditions. In the case of nfv-PPA, a metabolic pattern characterized by involvement of parietal, subcortical and brainstem structures predicted progression to a corticobasal degeneration syndrome or to progressive supranuclear palsy. lv-PPA and sv-PPA cases who progressed to Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia at the follow-up presented with extended bilateral patterns at baseline.Discussion: Our results indicate that FDG-PET voxel-wise imaging is a valid biomarker for the early differential diagnosis of PPAs and for the prediction of progression to specific dementia condition. This study supports the use of FDG-PET imaging quantitative assessment in clinical settings for a better characterization of PPA individuals and prognostic definition of possible endo-phenotypes.

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A novel task assessing intention and emotion attribution: Italian standardization and normative data of the Story-based Empathy Task

Cited by 94 publications

References 31 publications

Neural processing of social interaction: Coordinate‐based meta‐analytic evidence from human neuroimaging studies

Neural processing of social interaction: Coordinate‐based meta‐analytic evidence from human neuroimaging studies

Theory of Mind and Its Neuropsychological and Quality of Life Correlates in the Early Stages of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

The Role of Single-Subject Brain Metabolic Patterns in the Early Differential Diagnosis of Primary Progressive Aphasias and in Prediction of Progression to Dementia

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