Institute for Clinical, Biological and Differential Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2011 Nov;261 Suppl 2:S145-9. doi: 10.1007/s00406-011-0244-0. Epub 2011 Aug 24.
Research on social cognition focuses on several human abilities with a huge diversity in the approaches to tap the different functions. Empathy, for instance, is a rather elaborated human ability, and several recent studies point to significant impairments in patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia or autism. Neuroimaging data from these patients commonly indicate neural dysfunctions accompanying the behavioral deficits. Studying the neural correlates of social cognition is of particular importance, because deficits in these domains may explain the major dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders that prevent effective (re) integration into work and social life. It has also become clearer that social cognition deficits, similar to emotion dysfunctions, may represent trait markers and endophenotypes of the diseases. However, there are several challenges for future studies on social cognitive dysfunctions: on the one hand, the complexity of the constructs and thus the variety of definitions which make it hard to develop adequate tasks. On the other hand, results are needed that particularly address the disorder specificity of these impairments, as well as their potential as endophenotypes via analyzing people at high-risk and their relatives.
社会认知研究集中于人类的几种能力，在挖掘不同功能方面采用了多种方法。例如，同理心是一种相当复杂的人类能力，最近的几项研究表明，患有精神疾病（如精神分裂症或自闭症）的患者存在明显的障碍。这些患者的神经影像学数据通常表明伴随行为缺陷的神经功能障碍。研究社会认知的神经相关性尤为重要，因为这些领域的缺陷可能解释了精神疾病中的主要功能障碍，这些功能障碍阻碍了他们有效地（重新）融入工作和社会生活。同样清楚的是，类似于情绪功能障碍，社会认知缺陷可能代表疾病的特征标志物和内表型。然而，未来关于社会认知障碍的研究存在几个挑战：一方面，这些结构的复杂性导致了各种定义，这使得很难开发出适当的任务。另一方面，需要的是通过分析高风险人群及其亲属，特别针对这些损伤的障碍特异性以及它们作为内表型的潜力的结果。
