Wilson Nikki-Anne, Ahmed Rebekah, Piguet Olivier, Irish Muireann
The University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Centre, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia; The University of Sydney, School of Psychology, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; The University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, NSW 2031, Australia.
The University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Centre, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia; Memory and Cognition Clinic, Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia.
J Neurol Sci. 2024 Mar 15;458:122902. doi: 10.1016/j.jns.2024.122902. Epub 2024 Jan 24.
Social perception refers to the ability to adapt and update one's behaviour in accordance with the current context and provides the foundation for many complex social and emotional interactions. Alterations in social cognition are a hallmark of the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), yet the capacity for social perception in this syndrome remains unclear.
We examined social perception in 18 bvFTD and 13 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, in comparison with 17 healthy older controls, using a social perception task derived from the Dewey Story Test. Participants also completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and carers provided ratings of behavioural and neuropsychiatric changes.
Overall, bvFTD and AD performance diverged significantly from control ratings on the social perception task, however, no significant difference was found between patient groups. Standardised values relative to the mean control rating revealed considerable variability within the patient groups in terms of the direction of deviation, i.e., over- or under-rating the vignettes relative to healthy controls (range z-scores = -1.79 to +1.63). Greater deviation from control ratings was associated with more pronounced memory (p = .007) and behavioural (p = .009) disturbances in bvFTD; whilst social perception performance correlated exclusively with verbal fluency in AD (p = .003).
Social perception is comparably disrupted in bvFTD and AD, yet likely reflects the differential breakdown of distinct cognitive processes in each dementia syndrome. Our findings have important clinical implications for the development of targeted interventions to manage disease-specific changes in social perception in dementia.
社会认知是指根据当前情境调整和更新自身行为的能力，为许多复杂的社会和情感互动奠定基础。社会认知的改变是额颞叶痴呆行为变异型（bvFTD）的一个标志，但该综合征的社会认知能力仍不明确。
我们使用源自杜威故事测试的社会认知任务，对18例bvFTD患者、13例阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者以及17名健康老年对照者的社会认知进行了研究。参与者还完成了一套全面的神经心理学测试，护理人员对行为和神经精神变化进行了评分。
总体而言，bvFTD和AD患者在社会认知任务上的表现与对照评分有显著差异，然而，两组患者之间未发现显著差异。相对于平均对照评分的标准化值显示，患者组在偏差方向上存在相当大的变异性，即相对于健康对照者，对 vignettes 的评分过高或过低（z 分数范围 = -1.79 至 +1.63）。bvFTD患者中，与对照评分的偏差越大，记忆（p = 0.007）和行为（p = 0.009）障碍越明显；而在AD患者中，社会认知表现仅与语言流畅性相关（p = 0.003）。
bvFTD和AD患者的社会认知均受到类似程度的破坏，但可能反映了每种痴呆综合征中不同认知过程的差异瓦解。我们的研究结果对于制定针对性干预措施以管理痴呆患者社会认知方面的疾病特异性变化具有重要的临床意义。
