1 Department of Neurosurgery, Gui de Chauliac hospital, F-34295 Montpellier, France.
Brain. 2014 Mar;137(Pt 3):944-59. doi: 10.1093/brain/awt370. Epub 2014 Feb 10.
In the field of cognitive neuroscience, it is increasingly accepted that mentalizing is subserved by a complex frontotemporoparietal cortical network. Some researchers consider that this network can be divided into two distinct but interacting subsystems (the mirror system and the mentalizing system per se), which respectively process low-level, perceptive-based aspects and high-level, inference-based aspects of this sociocognitive function. However, evidence for this type of functional dissociation in a given neuropsychological population is currently lacking and the structural connectivities of the two mentalizing subnetworks have not been established. Here, we studied mentalizing in a large sample of patients (n = 93; 46 females; age range: 18-65 years) who had been resected for diffuse low-grade glioma-a rare tumour that migrates preferentially along associative white matter pathways. This neurological disorder constitutes an ideal pathophysiological model in which to study the functional anatomy of associative pathways. We mapped the location of each patient's resection cavity and residual lesion infiltration onto the Montreal Neurological Institute template brain and then performed multilevel lesion analyses (including conventional voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping and subtraction lesion analyses). Importantly, we estimated each associative pathway's degree of disconnection (i.e. the degree of lesion infiltration) and built specific hypotheses concerning the connective anatomy of the mentalizing subnetworks. As expected, we found that impairments in mentalizing were mainly related to the disruption of right frontoparietal connectivity. More specifically, low-level and high-level mentalizing accuracy were correlated with the degree of disconnection in the arcuate fasciculus and the cingulum, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, our findings constitute the first experimental data on the structural connectivity of the mentalizing network and suggest the existence of a dual-stream hodological system. Our results may lead to a better understanding of disorders that affect social cognition, especially in neuropathological conditions characterized by atypical/aberrant structural connectivity, such as autism spectrum disorders.
在认知神经科学领域，越来越多的人认为心理理论是由一个复杂的额颞顶枕皮质网络支持的。一些研究人员认为，这个网络可以分为两个不同但相互作用的子系统（镜像系统和心理理论系统本身），分别处理这种社会认知功能的低水平、基于感知的方面和高水平、基于推理的方面。然而，目前缺乏在特定神经心理学人群中这种功能分离的证据，并且两个心理理论子网的结构连接也尚未确定。在这里，我们在一个由 93 名患者组成的大样本中研究了心理理论（46 名女性；年龄范围：18-65 岁），这些患者因弥漫性低级别胶质瘤而接受了手术切除-这种罕见的肿瘤优先沿着联合白质通路迁移。这种神经障碍构成了研究联合通路功能解剖的理想生理病理模型。我们将每个患者的切除腔和残留病变浸润的位置映射到蒙特利尔神经学研究所模板脑上，然后进行多层次的病变分析（包括传统的体素基于病变症状映射和减法病变分析）。重要的是，我们估计了每个联合通路的断开程度（即病变浸润程度），并对心理理论子网的连接解剖学提出了具体假设。正如预期的那样，我们发现心理理论的损伤主要与右额顶枕连接的中断有关。更具体地说，低水平和高水平的心理理论准确性分别与弓状束和扣带的断开程度相关。据我们所知，我们的发现构成了心理理论网络结构连接的第一个实验数据，并表明存在双流束状系统。我们的结果可能有助于更好地理解影响社会认知的障碍，特别是在那些具有非典型/异常结构连接的神经病理学条件下，如自闭症谱系障碍。
