Violation of «Theory of mind» in patients with local brain lesions

“The theory of mind” (ToM) was in a focus in this study. We investigated the impairment of ToM in case of local brain lesion. ToM was analyzed by the “eye test” that measures the ability to contribute mental states to another person by reading the mind in their eyes. The test requires identifying 36 items (photos) by mapping a word from a list of 4 ones. The task consisted in identifying basal emotions (BE) and complex mental states (CS). Patients (36 pers) with different localization of brain damages were took part in this research. They were divided into 5 groups: basal ganglias (gr.1), bilateral lobe areas(gr.2), left hemisphere (gr.3).Mixed lesions were in two following groups, basal ganglias and right hemisphere (RH) (gr.4), basal ganglias and left hemisphere (LH) (gr.5). All patients revealed problems in cognition facial expressions. The results of 40% of the patients were below the normative level. The efficiency of the answers (ET_inde ) was valued as low, moderate and high. The difference between the groups in moderate ET_inde was considerable. The gr.4 was the lowest and in the gr.5 the highest. All the groups, except the gr.1, were higher score in CS than in BE. The gr.1 characterized by the impairment in recognition facial expressions in the whole. The side of brain lesion was a significant parameter. The LH patients revealed the better recognition of emotions than the RH ones. The RH lesions followed by the challenge in emotions identification in no relation to their complicity. It seems that the relatively higher score in CS recognition in comparison to BE in patients with cortical and subcortical brain lesions can be explained that social perception consists of different levels and has bilateral structure in human brain.

лицевая экспрессия, «eye test», «модель психического», локальные поражения мозга, базовые эмоции, сложные психические состояния, социальная перцепция, face expression, “eye test”, “the theory of mind”, local brain damages, basic emotion, complex mental states, social perception

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