Department of Neuroscience, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2013 May;67(4):273-6. doi: 10.1111/pcn.12045.
The aim of this study was to assess the hypothesis that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulties in tasks of affective theory of mind (ToM; the inference on others' feelings) especially in moderate/advanced PD stages. Difficulties of cognitive ToM have already been described in several previous studies.
Affective ToM was assessed with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task in 35 PD patients and 35 healthy controls. Depression, global cognitive status and executive functioning were also evaluated. Patients were distinguished in early PD and moderate PD according to their scores in the Hoehn and Yahr Staging Scale.
PD patients had more difficulties with affective ToM than healthy controls, also controlling for other variables that resulted in association with this ability. Early PD patients outperformed moderate PD patients, but this difference did not reach statistical significance when controlling for other variables.
These findings confirmed that affective ToM may be impaired in PD, but any conclusion can be made on the effect of disease progression on this ability of social cognition. Therefore, longitudinal studies are needed to investigate this potential effect.
本研究旨在评估以下假设，即帕金森病（PD）患者在情感理论思维（ToM；推断他人的感受）任务中可能存在困难，尤其是在中/晚期 PD 阶段。认知 ToM 的困难已在几项先前的研究中描述过。
使用“读心眼睛测验”评估 35 名 PD 患者和 35 名健康对照者的情感 ToM。还评估了抑郁、整体认知状态和执行功能。根据 Hoehn 和 Yahr 分期量表的评分，将患者分为早期 PD 和中重度 PD。
PD 患者在情感 ToM 方面比健康对照组更困难，即使控制了与该能力相关的其他变量也是如此。早期 PD 患者的表现优于中重度 PD 患者，但在控制其他变量后，这种差异没有达到统计学意义。
这些发现证实了情感 ToM 可能在 PD 中受损，但不能得出关于疾病进展对这种社会认知能力影响的任何结论。因此，需要进行纵向研究来探讨这种潜在的影响。
