Microstructural Correlates of Emotional Attribution Impairment in Non-Demented Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

PLoS One. 2016 Aug 11;11(8):e0161034. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161034. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Impairments in the ability to recognize and attribute emotional states to others have been described in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and linked to the dysfunction of key nodes of the emotional empathy network. Microstructural correlates of such disorders are still unexplored. We investigated the white-matter substrates of emotional attribution deficits in a sample of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients without cognitive decline. Thirteen individuals with either probable or definite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and 14 healthy controls were enrolled in a Diffusion Tensor Imaging study and administered the Story-based Empathy Task, assessing the ability to attribute mental states to others (i.e., Intention and Emotion attribution conditions). As already reported, a significant global reduction of empathic skills, mainly driven by a failure in Emotion Attribution condition, was found in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients compared to healthy subjects. The severity of this deficit was significantly correlated with fractional anisotropy along the forceps minor, genu of corpus callosum, right uncinate and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculi. The involvement of frontal commissural fiber tracts and right ventral associative fronto-limbic pathways is the microstructural hallmark of the impairment of high-order processing of socio-emotional stimuli in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These results support the notion of the neurofunctional and neuroanatomical continuum between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis / complications*
  • Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis / psychology
  • Brain / physiopathology*
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Cognition Disorders / diagnostic imaging
  • Cognition Disorders / etiology
  • Cognition Disorders / psychology*
  • Diffusion Tensor Imaging / methods*
  • Emotions / physiology*
  • Empathy / physiology*
  • Facial Expression
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Neuropsychological Tests

Grants and funding

This work was supported by a Ministry for Instruction, University and Research (MIUR) grant (PRIN 2010XPMFW4_008; I meccanismi neurocognitivi alla base delle interazioni sociali) (SFC, CC, CCe, AD, NC) and by Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca grant “Dottorato ad Alta Formazione in Psicologia Sperimentale, Linguistica e Neuroscienze Cognitive” (AD). CC was funded by Fondazione Eli-Lilly (Eli-Lilly grant 2011 “Imaging of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in prodromal and presymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease phases”). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.