OFC and limbic signatures of harmful actions evaluation in frontotemporal dementia

BAEZ, SANDRA; JUAN PABLO MORALES; TERESA TORRALVA; FACUNDO MANES; AGUSTÍN IBÁÑEZ

Congreso; Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN)Annual Meeting; 2015

Perceiving and evaluating harmful actions in an interpersonal context is both a cognitive and an emotionally laden task. It involves inference of intentions, moral judgment and, markedly the ability to empathize with others? suffering. Loss of empathy is a central symptom of the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), but the relationship between empathy impairments, other aspects involved in the evaluation of harmful actions such as intentionality and moral judgment, as well as the association with bvFTD regional brain atrophy, is not well understood. The present study investigated how GM atrophy in bvFTD patients correlates with aspects associated with the perception and evaluation of harmful actions (attribution of intentionality, evaluation of harmful behavior, empathy empathic concern and moral judgment). We compared the behavioral performance of 26 bvFTD patients and 23 healthy controls on an experimental task indexing intentionality, empathy and moral cognition during evaluation of harmful actions and performed voxel-based morphometry to measure and compare gray matter (GM) volumes in patients and controls. Furthermore, we examined the brain regions where atrophy might be associated with specific impairments in bvFTD patients. Finally, we explored whether intentionality comprehension and empathic concern deficits in bvFTD patients are partially explained by regional GM atrophy or by impairments in other relevant factors such as executive functions. Results showed that, in bvFTD patients, atrophy of limbic structures (amygdala and anterior paracingulate conrtes) is related to impairments in the intentionality comprehension, while atrophy of the orbitofrontal cortex and the fusiform gyrus is associated with empathic concern deficits. However, only atrophy of the orbitofrontal cortex predicted deficits in empathic concern. Intentionality comprehension impairments were predicted by executive functions. These results suggest that although several aspects involved in the perception and evaluation of harmful actions are affected in bvFTD patients, deficits in empathic concern seem to be a central aspect, which is associated with the earliest atrophied region. Our results contribute to the understanding of social cognition deficits in bvFTD patients and may have important clinical implications [supported by grants from CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular (1130920 and 1140114), PICT 2012-0412, and PICT 2012-1309, Colciencias Project (120354531693 - Grants: 371 - 2011 / 345-2011), CONICET, and the INECO Foundation].