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Título

SOCIAL COGNITION IN PARKINSON'S DISEASE AND SUPRANUCLEAR PARALYSIS: A NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION

Resumo

Introduction: Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) have deficits in mentalizing and facial emotion recognition, two core functions of social cognition (SC). There is scarce data regarding the direct comparison between PD and PSP patients in SC measures.
Method: We included three groups of participants: PD (n=18, mean age = 65.2±9.8 years, 9 men), PSP (n=20, mean age = 67.7±6.8 years, 8 men) and healthy controls (n=23, mean age =64.7±10 years, 8 men). Groups were matched for age, sex and education. Participants underwent clinical and neuropsychological exams, including the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), executive tests (Frontal Assessment Battery [FAB], spans, phonemic fluency, Hayling) and the mini-version of the Social and Emotional Assessment (Mini-SEA), which is composed of the facial emotion recognition test (FERT) and the modified faux-pas (mFP) test, which assesses mentalizing. Multivariate analyses considered executive performance and apathy as covariates.
Results: Compared to controls, PD and PSP patients had lower cognitive efficiency (MMSE). PD and PSP groups did not differ on the MMSE. PSP had lower score than PD patients and controls in the FAB. PD patients scored lower than controls in the mFP, but not in the FERT. PSP patients performed worse than controls in the mFP and in the FERT. PD and PSP groups did not differ in the FERT, but PSP performed worse than PD in the mFP test. These differences were maintained when controlling for executive dysfunction and apathy. The FERT and the mFP distinguished PSP from PD patients with 89% and 67% accuracies, respectively.
Conclusion: The assessment of SC may contribute to the differential diagnosis between PD and PSP.

Palavras Chave

Parkison's disease, social cognition, progressive supranuclear palsy

Área

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