Pagnoni Ilaria, Gobbi Elena, Alaimo Cristina, Campana Elena, Rossi Roberta, Manenti Rosa, Balconi Michela, Cotelli Maria
Neuropsychology Unit, IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli, Brescia, Italy.
Unit of Psychiatry, IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli, Brescia, Italy.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 Aug 16;13:980392. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.980392. eCollection 2022.
Patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) experience difficulties in multiple cognitive and affective abilities. A large body of literature has argued that MDD patients show impaired executive functions (EFs) and deficits in theory of mind (ToM), the ability to infer the mental states of others. However, the relationship between ToM and EFs has been poorly investigated. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of studies that evaluated the association between ToM and EFs in patients with MDD diagnosis. A literature review was conducted to identify all published studies in which ToM and EFs measures were administered to individuals with MDD and in which the relationship between these two domains was investigated. Eleven studies were included, and for each study, we discussed the findings related to ToM, EFs, and the nature of the link between these two aspects. Most of the studies reported that patients with MDD, compared with healthy controls, showed significant impairments in both ToM and EFs abilities. Moreover, this review indicates the presence of a significant association between these two domains in MDD patients, supporting the evidences that executive functioning is important to perform ToM tasks. Although the results that emerged are interesting, the relationship between ToM and EFs in MDD needs further investigation.
患有重度抑郁症（MDD）的患者在多种认知和情感能力方面存在困难。大量文献表明，MDD患者的执行功能（EFs）受损，且心理理论（ToM）存在缺陷，即推断他人心理状态的能力。然而，ToM与EFs之间的关系尚未得到充分研究。本综述的目的是概述评估MDD诊断患者中ToM与EFs之间关联的研究。进行了文献综述，以确定所有已发表的研究，这些研究对MDD患者进行了ToM和EFs测量，并研究了这两个领域之间的关系。纳入了11项研究，对于每项研究，我们讨论了与ToM、EFs以及这两个方面之间联系的性质相关的研究结果。大多数研究报告称，与健康对照组相比，MDD患者在ToM和EFs能力方面均表现出显著损害。此外，本综述表明MDD患者这两个领域之间存在显著关联，支持了执行功能对完成ToM任务很重要的证据。尽管得出的结果很有趣，但MDD中ToM与EFs之间的关系仍需进一步研究。
