Categoría: Papers con abstracts

En este trabajo se revisa el solapamiento genético y neuropatológico de la demencia frontotemporal (DFT) y la esclerosis lateral amiotrófica (ELA), en particular respecto al descubrimiento de la TDP43 (Transactive Response DNA Binding Protein 43 kDa) y la expansión del intron del C9ORF72 (cromosoma 9p21). Finalmente se destaca la necesidad de una aproximación multinivel a estas patologías en base registros nacionales.

The anterior cingulate cortex: an integrative hub for human socially-driven interactions. Autores Lavin C, Melis C, Mikulan E, Gelormini C, Huepe D, Ibanez A.  Año 2013 Journal  Lavin C, Melis C, Mikulan E, Gelormini C, Huepe D, Ibanez A.  Volumen 7: 64. Abstract   Otra información  En este trabajo proponemos la corteza cingulada anterior como un centro convergente (a través de sus conexiones fronto-temporales), de … Leer más

Este estudio evaluó los componentes múltiples de la empatía por dolor (afectivos, cognitivos, morales) en pacientes con demencia frontotemporal (bvFTD) mediante una tarea experimental que presenta acciones cotidianas. Aunque los pacientes presentaron déficits in los tres dominios, solamente la dimensión propiamente empática (empathic concern) resultó ser un déficit primario, no relacionado ni explicado por otros déficits de funciones ejecutivas u otras tareas de cognición social. Dichos resultados son cruciales tanto para la clínica de la bvFTD como para los modelos neuroanatómicos de la empatía.

Recent studies suggest that action-verb processing is particularly affected in early stage Parkinson’s disease (PD), highlighting the potential role of subcortical areas in language processing and in the semantic integration of actions. However, this disorder-related language impairment is frequently unrecognized by clinicians and often remains untreated. Early detection of action-language processing deficits could be critical for diagnosing and developing treatment strategies for PD. In this article, we review how action-verb processing is affected in PD and propose a model in which multiple and parallel frontotemporal circuits between the cortex and the basal ganglia provide the anatomic substrate for supporting action-language processing. We hypothesize that contextual coupling of action-language networks are partially dependent on cortical-subcortical integration, and not only on somatotopic motor cortical organization or in a mirror neuron system. This hypothesis is supported by both experimental and clinical evidence. Then, we identify further research steps that would help to determine the reliability of action-language impairments as an early marker of PD. Finally, theoretical implications for clinical assessment and for models of action-language interaction (action-perception cycle theories, mirror system models of language, and embodied cognition approaches to language) are discussed.

Impaired social cognition has been claimed to be a mechanism underlying the development and maintenance of borderline personality disorder (BPD). One important aspect of social cognition is the theory of mind (ToM), a complex skill that seems to be influenced by more basic processes, such as executive functions (EF) and emotion recognition. Previous ToM studies in BPD have yielded inconsistent results. This study assessed the performance of BPD adults on ToM, emotion recognition, and EF tasks. We also examined whether EF and emotion recognition could predict the performance on ToM tasks. We evaluated 15 adults with BPD and 15 matched healthy controls using different tasks of EF, emotion recognition, and ToM. The results showed that BPD adults exhibited deficits in the three domains, which seem to be task-dependent. Furthermore, we found that EF and emotion recognition predicted the performance on ToM. Our results suggest that tasks that involve real-life social scenarios and contextual cues are more sensitive to detect ToM and emotion recognition deficits in BPD individuals. Our findings also indicate that (a) ToM variability in BPD is partially explained by individual differences on EF and emotion recognition; and (b) ToM deficits of BPD patients are partially explained by the capacity to integrate cues from face, prosody, gesture, and social context to identify the emotions and others’ beliefs.

Recently (Roca et al., 2010), we used the relationship with general intelligence (Spearman’s g) to define two sets of frontal lobe or «executive » tests. For one group, including Wisconsin Card Sorting and Verbal Fluency, reduction in g entirely explained the deficits found in frontal patients. For another group, including tests of social cognition and multitasking, frontal deficits remained even after correction for g. Preliminary evidence suggested a link of the latter tasks to more anterior frontal regions. Here we develop this distinction in the context of behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a disorder which progressively affects frontal lobe cortices. In bvFTD, some executive tests, including tests of social cognition and multitasking, decline from the early stage of the disease, while others, including classical executive tests such as Wisconsin Card Sorting, Verbal Fluency or Trail Making Test part B, show deficits only later on. Here we show that, while deficits in the classical executive tests are entirely explained by g, deficits in the social cognition and multitasking tests are not. The results suggest a relatively selective cognitive deficit at mild stages of the disease, followed by more widespread cognitive decline well predicted by g.

IMPORTANCE: Several clinical reports have stated that patients with prefrontal lesions or patients with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia share social cognition impairments. Moral reasoning is impaired in both conditions but there have been few investigations that directly compare this domain in the 2 groups. OBSERVATIONS: This work compared the moral judgments of these patient groups using a task designed to disentangle the contributions of intentions and outcomes in moral judgment. For both disorders, patients judged scenarios where the protagonists believed that they would cause harm but did not as being more permissible than the control group. Moreover, patients with frontotemporal dementia judged harmful outcomes in the absence of harmful intentions as less permissible than the control participants. There were no differences between the 2 conditions. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Both disorders involved impairments in integrating intention and outcome information for moral judgment. This study was the first, to our knowledge, to directly compare a social cognition domain in 2 frontal pathologies with different etiology. Our results highlighted the importance of comparing patients with vascular lesions and patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

BACKGROUND: Based on the higher frequency of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation during night and early morning hours, we sought to analyze the association between newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation and wake-up ischemic cerebrovascular events.METHODS: We prospectively assessed every acute ischemic stroke and TIA patient admitted to our hospital between 2008 and 2011. We used a forward step-by-step multiple logistic regression analysis to assess the relationship between newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation and wake-up ischemic stroke or TIA, after adjusting for significant covariates.RESULTS: The study population comprised 356 patients, 274 (77.0%) with a diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke and 82 (23.0%) with TIA. A total of 41 (11.5%) of these events occurred during night sleep. A newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation was detected in 27 patients of 272 without known atrial fibrillation (9.9%). We found an independent association between newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation and wake-up ischemic stroke and TIA (odds ratio 3.6, 95% confidence interval 1.2-7.7, p = 0.019).CONCLUSIONS: The odds of detecting a newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation were 3-fold higher among wake-up cerebrovascular events than among non-wake-up events. The significance of this independent association between newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation and wake-up ischemic stroke and TIA and the role of other comorbidities should be investigated in future studies.

Background: Interoception refers to the conscious perception of body signals. Mindfulness is ameditation that encourages individuals to focus on their internal experiences such as bodilysensations, thoughts, and emotions. In this study we selected a behavioral measure ofinteroceptive sensitivity (heartbeat detection task, HBD) to compare the effect of meditationpractice on interoceptive sensitivity among long term practitioners (LTP), short term meditators(STM, subjects that completed a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program) andcontrols (non-meditators). All participants were examined with a battery of different tasksincluding mood state, executive function and social cognition tests (emotion recognition,empathy and theory of mind).Findings: Compared to controls, both meditators’ groups showed lower levels of anxiety anddepression, but no improvement in executive function or social cognition performance wasobserved (except for lower scores compared to controls only in the personal distress dimensionof empathy). More importantly, meditators´ performance did not differ from that ofnonmeditators regarding cardiac interoceptive sensitivity.Conclusion: Results suggest no influence of meditation practice in cardiac interoception and inmost related social cognition measures. These negative results could be partially due to the factthat awareness of heartbeat sensations is not emphasized during mindfulness/vipassanameditation and may not be the best index of the awareness supported by the practice ofmeditation.

BACKGROUND: The dimensional approach to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) considers ASD as the extreme of a dimension traversing through the entire population. We explored the potential utility of electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity as a biomarker. We hypothesized that individual differences in autistic traits of typical subjects would involve a long-range connectivity diminution within the delta band. METHODS: Resting-state EEG functional connectivity was measured for 74 neurotypical subjects. All participants also provided a questionnaire (Social Responsiveness Scale, SRS) that was completed by an informant who knows the participant in social settings. We conducted multivariate regression between the SRS score and functional connectivity in all EEG frequency bands. We explored modulations of network graph metrics characterizing the optimality of a network using the SRS score. RESULTS: Our results show a decay in functional connectivity mainly within the delta and theta bands (the lower part of the EEG spectrum) associated with an increasing number of autistic traits. When inspecting the impact of autistic traits on the global organization of the functional network, we found that the optimal properties of the network are inversely related to the number of autistic traits, suggesting that the autistic dimension, throughout the entire population, modulates the efficiency of functional brain networks. CONCLUSIONS: EEG functional connectivity at low frequencies and its associated network properties may be associated with some autistic traits in the general population.