Social cognition and executive performance predicted by network centrality of bvFTD atrophy areas

ABREVAYA SOFIA; SEDEÑO LUCAS; COUTO BLAS; GARCÍA CORDERO INDIRA; BAEZ SANDRA; KULJIS RODRIGO; MANES FACUNDO; IBAÑEZ AGUSTIN

Conferencia; 9 th International Conference on Frontotemporal Dementias; 2014

The core clinical features of the frontemporal dementia (bvFTD) encompass progressive social, behavioraland executive functions. The pattern of atrophy in early stages affects a frontotemporoinsular network that includesanterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, frontal pole, amygdale and striatum. Some researchers have found thatconnectivity abnormalities were associated to behavioral symptoms, executive dysfunctions and disease severity.However, none of these studies have employed social cognition tasks to investigate the possible relationship between social deficits and connectivity abnormalities. The aim of our work was to assess whether patients connectivity might be associated to social cognition evaluation outcomes. Fourteen bvFTD patients and twelvehealthy matched controls underwent fMRI resting-state paradigm and we assessed their performance in facialemotion recognition, ToM and executive functions. bvFTD patients presented a significant impaired performance inthese three domains compared to controls. We assessed the Network Centrality (NC) of areas comprising the typicalpattern of atrophy in bvDFT (involving frontal, insular and temporal cortices). NC was decreased in patients comparedto controls. Simple linear regression for the entire sample revealed that the NC predicted participants performance inboth social cogniton and executive functions assesstment. Classification methods revealed that patients werediscriminated from the control group by the combination of NC values and their social-executive performance. Inconclusion, early degeneration in bvFTD alters NC in the frontotemporoinsular network, which is associated withhigh-level social cognitive and executive profiles.