Dal Monte Olga, Schintu Selene, Pardini Matteo, Berti Anna, Wassermann Eric M, Grafman Jordan, Krueger Frank
Department of Neuropsychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
INSERM, U1028, CNRS, UMR5292, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, ImpAct Team, Lyon, France; University UCBL Lyon 1, France.
Cortex. 2014 Sep;58:9-17. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.05.002. Epub 2014 May 21.
Deficit in the ability to understand and predict the mental states of others is one of the central features of traumatic brain injury (TBI), leading to problems in social-daily life such as social withdrawal and the inability to maintain work or family relationships. Although several functional neuroimaging studies have identified a widely distributed brain network involved in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), the necessary brain regions engaged in this capacity are still heavily debated. In this study, we combined the RMET with a whole-brain voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) approach to identify brain regions necessary for adequate RMET performance in a large sample of patients with penetrating TBI (pTBI). Our results revealed that pTBI patients performed worse on the RMET compared to non-head injured controls, and impaired RMET performance was associated with lesions in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Our findings suggest that the left IFG is a key region in reading the mind in the eyes, probably involved in a more general impairment of a semantic working memory system that facilitates reasoning about what others are feeling and thinking as expressed by the eyes.
理解和预测他人心理状态的能力缺陷是创伤性脑损伤（TBI）的核心特征之一，会导致社交日常生活中的问题，如社交退缩以及无法维持工作或家庭关系。尽管多项功能神经影像学研究已确定在眼睛解读心智测试（RMET）中涉及一个广泛分布的脑网络，但参与这种能力的必要脑区仍存在激烈争论。在本研究中，我们将RMET与基于体素的全脑损伤症状映射（VLSM）方法相结合，以在大量穿透性TBI（pTBI）患者样本中确定RMET表现良好所必需的脑区。我们的结果显示，与非头部受伤的对照组相比，pTBI患者在RMET上表现更差，且RMET表现受损与左侧额下回（IFG）的损伤有关。我们的研究结果表明，左侧IFG是眼睛解读心智的关键区域，可能涉及语义工作记忆系统更普遍的损伤，该系统有助于推理他人通过眼睛所表达的感受和想法。
