TY - JOUR
T1 - Acquired personality traits of autism following damage to the medial prefrontal cortex
AU - Umeda, Satoshi
AU - Mimura, Masaru
AU - Kato, Motoichiro
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to: Satoshi Umeda, Department of Psychology, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan. E-mail: [email protected] This study was supported by Grant-in-Aids for Scientific Research (16203038) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). We are grateful to the two patients who participated in this study.
PY - 2010/2
Y1 - 2010/2
N2 - Recent neuroimaging studies on "theory of mind" have demonstrated that the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved when subjects are engaged in various kinds of mentalising tasks. Although a large number of neuroimaging studies have been published, a relatively small amount of neuropsychological evidence supports involvement of the medial PFC in theory of mind reasoning. We recruited two neurological cases with damage to the medial PFC and initially performed the standard neuropsychological assessments for intelligence, memory, and executive functions. To examine theory of mind performance in these two cases, four kinds of standard and advanced tests for theory of mind were used, including first- and second-order false belief tests, the strange stories test, and the faux pas recognition test. Both patients were also requested to complete the questionnaire for the autism-spectrum quotient. Neither case showed impairment on standard theory of mind tests and only mild impairments were seen on advanced theory of mind tests. This pattern of results is basically consistent with previous studies. The most interesting finding was that both cases showed personality changes after surgical operations, leading to characteristics of autism showing a lack of social interaction in everyday life. We discuss herein the possible roles of the medial PFC and emphasize the importance of using multiple approaches to understand the mechanisms of theory of mind and medial prefrontal functions.
AB - Recent neuroimaging studies on "theory of mind" have demonstrated that the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved when subjects are engaged in various kinds of mentalising tasks. Although a large number of neuroimaging studies have been published, a relatively small amount of neuropsychological evidence supports involvement of the medial PFC in theory of mind reasoning. We recruited two neurological cases with damage to the medial PFC and initially performed the standard neuropsychological assessments for intelligence, memory, and executive functions. To examine theory of mind performance in these two cases, four kinds of standard and advanced tests for theory of mind were used, including first- and second-order false belief tests, the strange stories test, and the faux pas recognition test. Both patients were also requested to complete the questionnaire for the autism-spectrum quotient. Neither case showed impairment on standard theory of mind tests and only mild impairments were seen on advanced theory of mind tests. This pattern of results is basically consistent with previous studies. The most interesting finding was that both cases showed personality changes after surgical operations, leading to characteristics of autism showing a lack of social interaction in everyday life. We discuss herein the possible roles of the medial PFC and emphasize the importance of using multiple approaches to understand the mechanisms of theory of mind and medial prefrontal functions.
KW - Anterior cingulate cortex
KW - Autism-spectrum quotient
KW - Medial prefrontal cortex
KW - Mentalising
KW - Theory of mind
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77950490732&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77950490732&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17470910902990584
DO - 10.1080/17470910902990584
M3 - Article
C2 - 19637100
AN - SCOPUS:77950490732
SN - 1747-0919
VL - 5
SP - 19
EP - 29
JO - Social Neuroscience
JF - Social Neuroscience
IS - 1
ER -