title: Emotional and cognitive social processes are impaired in Parkinson's disease and are related to behavioral disorders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with behavioral disorders that can affect social functioning but are poorly understood. Since emotional and cognitive social processes are known to be crucial in social relationships, impairment of these processes may account for the emergence of behavioral disorders.
  
  
  METHODS
  We used a systematic battery of tests to assess emotional processes and social cognition in PD patients and relate our findings to conventional neuropsychological data (especially behavioral disorders). Twenty-three PD patients and 46 controls (matched for age and educational level) were included in the study and underwent neuropsychological testing, including an assessment of the behavioral and cognitive components of executive function. Emotional and cognitive social processes were assessed with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index caregiver-administered questionnaire (as a measure of empathy), a facial emotion recognition task and two theory of mind (ToM) tasks.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When compared with controls, PD patients showed low levels of empathy (p = .006), impaired facial emotion recognition (which persisted after correction for perceptual abilities) (p = .001), poor performance in a second-order ToM task (p = .008) that assessed both cognitive (p = .004) and affective (p = .03) inferences and, lastly, frequent dysexecutive behavioral disorders (in over 40% of the patients). Overall, impaired emotional and cognitive social functioning was observed in 17% of patients and was related to certain cognitive dysexecutive disorders. In terms of behavioral dysexecutive disorders, social behavior disorders were related to impaired emotional and cognitive social functioning (p = .04) but were independent of cognitive impairments.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Emotional and cognitive social processes were found to be impaired in Parkinson's disease. This impairment may account for the emergence of social behavioral disorders.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Fonctionnelles et Pathologies (EA 4559), Jules Verne University of Picardie, France. paulinenarme@gmail.com
authors.forename: Pauline
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Narme
authors.forename: Harold
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mouras
authors.forename: Martine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Roussel
authors.forename: Cécile
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Duru
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Krystkowiak
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Godefroy
mesh_terms: D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000150:complications*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D056345:Theory of Mind