IMPAIRMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION IN FRONTO-TEMPORAL DEMENTIA

Damages in social cognition processes are revised, such as face and emotions recognition, The- ory of Mind (TM) and moral judgment in frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia, and are compared with psychopathic and antisocial personality disorder (APD), Alzheimer dementia (AD) and Schizophrenia (S). Patients with the frontal variant of the frontotemporal dementia have impairments in almost all processes of social cognition, correlated with atrophy severity and reduction in brain metabolism, particularly in temporal and prefrontal lobes (orbitofrontal). Damages in social cognition tasks which were found in psychopathic and APD are limited to disturbances in facial emotional recognition. AD has lesser emotional recognition tasks impairments and S shows selective impairments in TM tasks. Orbitofrontal cortex is one of the foremost areas for social cognition, but as frontotemporal dementia represents an acute and fast developing neuro- degenerative illness, psychopathic diseases and S are a slow growing process bound to neurodevelopment. This difference stands as an important factor for differential impairment pattern in clinical conditions.