Social cognitive impairments:are there differences between various neurological patient groups?

Background<br/>It is known that impairments in social cognitive functioning occur in various neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS), brain tumour, Parkinsons Disease, and other. Impairments in social cognition can be diverse including difficulties with perceiving social information (emotion recognition), understanding social information (taking perspective, Theory of Mind), and regulating behaviour. Which of these aspects is most apparent varies between patients. So far, it is not clear whether neurological patient groups show differences in social cognitive impairments. Therefore, the aim of this explorative study is to investigate if there is variance in how social cognitive impairments manifest across various neurological disorders. <br/><br/>Methods<br/>69 patients with various neurological disorders (14 TBI, 19 stroke, 15 brain tumour, 12 MS and 9 other) with social cognitive or behavioural impairments were included and compared to 55 healthy controls, matched on age, gender and educational level. All participants performed the Eckman-60faces-test (EFT) to measure emotion recognition, Happé cartoon test and Faux-pas test measuring Theory of Mind, and Dysexecutive Questionnaire self-administered and proxy-administered (DEX-self and DEX-proxy) to measure behaviour. Only patients filled in the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).<br/>Differences between patients and healthy controls were tested by means of independent sample t-tests. To measure the differences between the patient groups, a one-way ANOVA was used. <br/><br/>Results<br/>All patients scored significantly lower on the EFT-Total score (p &lt; .05), Happé cartoon test (p &lt; .001), DEX-self (p &lt; .001), and Dex-proxy (p &lt; .001) compared to healthy controls. Patients did not significantly differ from healthy controls on the Faux-pas test. Furthermore, results showed no significant differences between the various patient groups on any of the tests or questionnaires. <br/><br/>Discussion<br/>This study shows that impairments in social cognition indeed occur in various neurological patient groups. Between the different patient groups, no differences were found with regard to any of the aspects of their social cognitive impairments (emotion recognition, Theory of Mind and behaviour). This suggests that the variance in social cognitive impairment differs more between single patients than between specific patient groups, which stresses the importance to consider and measure social cognitive impairments in various neurological patient groups. Moreover, these results suggest that available evidence-based treatments (such as T-ScEmo) could apply for all neurological patients with social cognitive impairments. <br/>

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