We investigated social cognition and theory of mind in patients with schizophrenia and in patients with frontotemporal dementia in order to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms involved in the breakdown of these skills in psychiatric and neurological patients. Our tasks included videotaped scenarios of social interactions depicting sincere, sarcastic and paradoxical remarks, as well as lies. We found impaired performance of the schizophrenia group on all theory of mind conditions despite their intact understanding of sincere statements. In contrast, the FTD group performed poorly only when they had to rely on paralinguistic cues indicating sarcasm or lies, and not on paradoxical remarks or sarcasm when given additional verbal cues. Our findings suggest that, while current deficits in social and interpersonal functioning in patients with FTD may reflect a decrement in previously acquired skills, similar deficits in patients with schizophrenia may reflect an altogether inadequately learned process.

Mary H. Kosmidis

Eleni Aretouli

Vassilis P. Bozikas

Maria Giannakou

Panayiotis Ioannidis

Studying Social Cognition in Patients with Schizophrenia and Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia: Theory of Mind and the Perception of Sarcasm

Introduction: Understanding the mental states of others entails a number of cognitive processes known as Theory of Mind (ToM). Behavioural and functional neuroimaging evidence suggests that prefrontal and temporo-parietal cortices are involved in these abilities. The present study was aimed at investigating the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction in ToM by using a repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) paradigm.Material and Methods: Eleven healthy subjects participated in the study. The experimental ToM procedure was constituted by false belief and faux-pas written stories. Subjects were evaluated in baseline condition (Sham) and after 1Hz rTMS over the left/right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction. A score for accuracy and response times were recorded.Results: As regards false beliefs, rTMS over right prefrontal and temporo-parietal areas significantly interfered with response times (p &#x3C; 0.05). The application of rTMS over right/left prefrontal and right temporo-parietal cortices also significantly worsened accuracy in the ability to take the others&#x2019; perspective in faux-pas tasks as compared to Sham (p &#2264; 0.05 in all cases).Conclusions: The results of the present study are consistent with previous findings supporting the hypothesis that prefrontal and temporo-parietal regions are part of a neural network specifically underpinning the ability to attribute mental states to others.

Alberto Costa

Sara Torriero

Massimiliano Oliveri

Carlo Caltagirone

Prefrontal and Temporo-Parietal Involvement in Taking Others&#x2019; Perspective: TMS Evidence

Two areas in the human occipito-temporal cortex respond preferentially to faces: &#x2018;the fusiform face area&#x2019; (&#x2018;FFA&#x2019;) and the &#x2018;occipital face area&#x2019; (&#x2018;OFA&#x2019;). However, it is unclear whether these areas have an exclusive role in processing faces, or if sub-maximal responses in other visual areas such as the lateral occipital complex (LOC) are also involved. To clarify this issue, we tested a brain-damaged patient (PS) presenting a face-selective impairment with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The right hemisphere lesion of the prosoagnosic patient encompasses the &#x2018;OFA&#x2019; but preserves the &#x2018;FFA&#x2019; and LOC [14,16]. Using fMRI-adaptation, we found a larger response to different faces than repeated faces in the ventral part of the LOC both for normals and the patient, next to her right hemisphere lesion. This observation indicates that following prosopagnosia, areas that do not respond preferentially to faces such as the ventral part of the LOC (vLOC) may still be recruited to subtend residual perception of individual faces.

Laurence Dricot

Bettina Sorger

Christine Schiltz

Rainer Goebel

Bruno Rossion

Evidence for Individual Face Discrimination in Non-Face Selective Areas of the Visual Cortex in Acquired Prosopagnosia

There is ongoing theoretical debate regarding episodic memory and how it can be accurately measured, in particular if the focus should be content-based recall of episodic details or something more experiential involving the subjective capacity to mentally travel back in time and &#x201C;re-live&#x201D; aspects of the original event. The autonoetic subscale of the Episodic Autobiographical Memory Interview (EAMI) is presented here as a new test instrument that attempts to redress theoretical and methodological shortcomings in autobiographical memory assessment. The EAMI merges a phenomenological detail-based approach with an assessment of autonoetic consciousness, departing considerably from traditional Remember/Know paradigms used within this field. We present findings from an initial pilot study investigating the potential markers of autonoetic consciousness that may accompany episodic retrieval. Key behavioural indices of autonoetic consciousness, notably those of viewer perspective, visual imagery, and emotional re-experiencing, emerged as being inextricably bound with the level of phenomenological detail recalled and the overall re-living judgment. The autonoetic subscale of the EAMI permits conceptually refined assessment of episodic personal memories and the accompanying subjective experience of mental re-living, characteristic of episodic memory.

M. Irish

B. A. Lawlor

S. M. O'Mara

R. F. Coen

Assessment of Behavioural Markers of Autonoetic Consciousness during Episodic Autobiographical Memory Retrieval: A Preliminary Analysis

We report a case of massive associative visual agnosia. In the light of current theories of identification and semantic knowledge organization, a deficit involving both levels of structural description system and visual semantics must be assumed to explain the case. We suggest, in line with a previous case study [1], an alternative account in the framework of (non abstractive) episodic models of memory [4].

A. Charnallet

S. Carbonnel

D. David

O. Moreaud

Associative Visual Agnosia: A Case Study

Due to their interactivity and to the sense of presence they afford, virtual environments constitute an interesting opportunity to study spatial cognition. In accordance with this perspective, we aimed to introduce a spatial test in virtual simulation in order to investigate the survey spatial ability in patients with topographical disorientation. To do this, we used the &#x201C;planning in advance task&#x201D; in a virtual environment that constitutes an effective procedure to experimentally evaluate survey maps. With this procedure we present the single case of a woman, with a right medial temporal lobe lesion, who shows a selective impairment in the acquisition of new spatial relationships. The patient&#x2019;s performance in &#x201C;planning in advance task&#x201D; was compared with that of a control group made up of 40 female subjects matched for age and education. Results show how the patient revealed a significantly lower spatial performance when compared to the control group, demonstrating an inability to solve survey-type spatial tasks in complex virtual environments.

Francesca Morganti

Maria Luisa Rusconi

Anna Paladino

Giuliano Geminiani

Antonella Carassa

The Use of Virtual Environments for Survey Spatial Ability Evaluation in Topographical Disorientation

Public events and Flashbulb memories were investigated in 12 non-demented patients with Parkinson&#x2019;s disease (PD) and 12 controls. Knowledge of public events and flashbulbs memories were assessed using a Famous Events Test (EVE 30). Contributions of semantic, episodic, as well as executive functioning and anterograde memory were examined. Results primarily showed that the performances of patients with PD were lower than these of controls in 4 tasks: free recall, specific questions, dating events and date recognition. They also had difficulties in finding the temporal order of 8 events. In contrast, the PD group benefited from events recognition themselves to the same extent as the controls. Secondly, the recall of flashbulb memories (FBM) was lower in the PD group than in the controls. Finally, correlations appeared in PD between the detailed recall of the events with the &#x201C;recall&#x201D; abilities of the MATTIS scale, possibly reflect an impairment in rebuilding memories. A positive correlation is also observed with the initiation score of the MATTIS (executive component), suggesting that the difficulties of rebuilding can be related to a dysfunction in accessing information because of a certain degree of frontal amnesia.

C&#xe9;line Borg

Catherine Thomas Ant&#xe9;rion

H&#xe9;l&#xe8;ne Vioux

Aur&#xe9;lia Poujois

Bernard Laurent

Public Events and Flashbulb Memories in Parkinson&#x2019;s Disease

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