Abstract

TABERNERO, María Eugenia  and  POLITIS, Daniel Gustavo. Recognition of basic emotion and their relation with theory of mind in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2016, vol.33, n.1, pp.21-39. ISSN 1668-7027.

Behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is associated with dramatic changes in personality. The behavioral manifestations that show these patients may be due, to one hand, to abnormal emotional processing as a result of the anatomical regions concerned, and on the other, to alterations in Theory of Mind (ToM). Basic emotions are biologically determined. Joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear are the emotional states that have received most agreement. ToM allows representing, inferring and interpreting mental and emotional states of others. It has been suggested that it is not a unitary concept. Cognitive Theory of Mind refers to the representations regarding the cognitive status of others. Affective ToM refers to the representation of emotional and motivational states. The objectives were to study the presence of alterations in the recognition of basic emotions in the face and voice in patients with bvFTD, aswell as examine the relation ships that exist between the recognition of basic emotions and TdM, to know if there are, or not, independent processes. To study, finally, the presence of dissociations between emotional and cognitive ToM, to know which one of these types of ToM shows greater alteration in our population. 26 bvFTD patients were assessed, diagnosed on the basis of the criteria proposed by the International Consortium Behavioral Variant FTD Criteria, and 23 control subjects. A battery for facial recognition of basic emotions (FRBE) was administered, selecting 60 photographs of the Pictures of Facial Affect. Three tasks were created, comprising 60 sheets each, 10 forevery basic emotion. A test for recognition of emotional prosody was also administered. Among the ToM tests were Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME), Faux Pas, and Firs Order False Belief Task (FOFBT). 81% of the patients showed alterations in at least one of the tests RFEB, and 35% in emotional prosody recognition. All RFEB tasks showed a significantly moderate statistical correlation with the emotional prosody task. The Naming subtest and the Total Emotions Score (RFEB) showed correlations with RME test, while all tasks RFEB correlated with FC1ºO. Finally, 10 simple dissociations between altered FRBE and preserved emotional prosody were found, and double dissociations between emotional and cognitive ToM, with greater impairment of the emotional component of ToM Discussion: A decreased performance is corroborated in the bvFTD patients group, relative to a control group, in all FRBE tasks. The recognition of emotional prosody is preserved. The presence of correlations between RME and all FRBE tasks may be explained by the neuropsychological structure of the tasks. The correlations found between RME and under standing of emotional prosody may be due to the fact that both tests assess emotional comprehension. As for the correlations found between FC1ºO and all FRBE tasks, taking into account that there seems to be no bibliographic outcome regarding to this correlation, that the neuropsychological tasks structure is completely different, and that FC1ºO showed no correlations with the emotional prosody task, it seems not possible for us to explain this result, leaving open the possibility for the development of a acceptable conclusion. Because of the absence of significant correlations between all of the recognition of basic and complex emotions tasks, we infer that the basic emotions are a qualitatively different kind of emotional state that secondary emotions, this lasts ones processed through ToM.

Keywords : Basic emotions; Secondary emotions; Emotional Theory of Mind; Cognitive Theory of Mind; Behavioral variant of Frontotemporal dementia.

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