FEDER - INSERM - Cofin allocation - Rémi LAILLIER
Kohesio
EPA INSERM INSTITUT NAT DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE
Frontotemporal dementia and Huntington's disease are two neurodegenerative pathologies that cause damage to the behavioral sphere. Social behavior and interpersonal relationships are disrupted and one of the causal explanations proposed in this regard is that of disorders of social cognition. The present project aims to deepen the study of this cognitive domain to better understand these pathologies and potentially contribute to developing early neuropsychological markers in order to allow the most appropriate treatment possible. Both pathologies are accompanied by executive deficits centered on the capacities of cognitive flexibility, inhibition, control and planning. Memory difficulties are also observed in these two pathologies, even if they cannot be described as authentic, at an early stage of the disease, since the difficulties reside mainly in the ability to strategically retrieve information from memory and are therefore not attributable to an encoding dysfunction. Furthermore, if there are disorders of social behavior and interpersonal relationships in both pathologies, the nature of these disorders and their cause remain poorly understood today. However, they seem to have a more negative impact than motor and cognitive symptoms on the functional skills and quality of life of patients (Ho et al., 2009). Authors have recently suggested that the different behavioral symptoms inherent to these neurological conditions could be explained at least in part by alterations in social cognition, both in fronto-temporal dementia (Gregory et al., 2002) and in Huntington's disease (Allain et al., 2011; Snowden et al., 2003). This domain refers to the mastery of social knowledge, which is stored in semantic memory, the perception and processing of social signals, that is to say emotions, as well as the ability to represent the mental, cognitive and affective states of others, better known under the term theory of mind. Several studies have demonstrated impairment of these abilities in frontotemporal dementia. Furthermore, it has been shown that these patients have disorders in emotion perception (Torralva et al., 2009) and theory of mind (Le Bouc et al., 2012). The exploration of these social skills in Huntington's disease is rarer. Work on the perception of emotions has shown abnormalities from the presymptomatic stage of the disease (Henley et al., 2012). In addition, the rare studies carried out in Huntington's disease suggest the existence of cognitive and affective theory of mind disorders at a symptomatic stage of the disease whereas there would not be any at the presymptomatic stage (Saft et al., 2012) but further research is necessary. Finally, more generally, the mechanisms underlying these social cognition disorders are still poorly understood, as are the brain abnormalities responsible for them. Furthermore, the relationships between theory of mind processes, memory, and executive functioning are still subject to debate in the neuropsychological literature, and studies conducted to date do not provide a consensus to explain the nature of theory of mind disorders and social cognition more generally. This is even more true with regard to Huntington's disease due to the limited number of studies targeting this pathology.
Smarter Europe / Research and innovation / Research and innovation activities in public research centres and centres of competence including networking