University of Tunis El Manar, High Institute of Human Sciences, Department of Psychology, 26 Boulevard Darghouth Pacha, Tunis, Tunisia.
Univ Angers, Université De Nantes, LPPL, SFR CONFLUENCES, F-49000 Angers, France.
Soc Neurosci. 2021 Dec;16(6):607-626. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2021.1983458. Epub 2021 Oct 1.
Despite the key role that decoding of social-perceptual cues from faces plays in interpersonal communication, it is only recently that the potential of prefrontal cortex damage to disrupt this ability has been recognized. In fact, few studies to date had assessed whether the ability to identify the state of mind of others from the whole or part of the face is disrupted after prefrontal cortex damage and whether these two abilities are associated and share overlapped neural systems. In the present study, 30 patients with focal prefrontal lesions and 30 matched control subjects were assessed on their ability to recognize six basic emotions from facial expressions of the whole face and to identify states of mind of others from photographs of only the eyes using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task". Results showed that frontal patients were significantly impaired compared with control subjects on both tasks. Moreover, regression analyses showed that these two abilities are associated and reciprocally predictive of one another. Finally, using voxel-based lesion analysis; we identified a partially common bilaterally distributed prefrontal network in the decoding of both emotional cues from both the whole face and eyes centered within the dorsomedial and ventral regions with extension to the lateral frontal pole.
尽管从面部解码社会知觉线索在人际交流中起着关键作用，但直到最近才认识到前额叶皮层损伤可能会破坏这种能力。事实上，迄今为止，很少有研究评估过前额叶皮层损伤后，是否会从整个面部或面部的一部分识别他人心理状态的能力受到干扰，以及这两种能力是否相关并共享重叠的神经系统。在本研究中，我们评估了 30 名有局灶性前额叶损伤的患者和 30 名匹配的对照组被试，评估他们从整个面部表情识别六种基本情绪的能力，以及使用“读心眼任务”仅从眼睛照片识别他人心理状态的能力。结果表明，前额叶损伤患者在这两项任务上均明显逊于对照组。此外，回归分析表明，这两种能力相互关联并相互预测。最后，使用基于体素的病变分析，我们在解码整个面部和眼睛的情绪线索时，确定了一个双侧分布的部分共同前额叶网络，该网络位于背内侧和腹侧区域内，延伸到外侧额叶极。
