Social cognition in focal epilepsy

• Applicants: Dr. Birgitta Metternich, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Michael Schönenberg
• Subject Area: Clinical Neurology; Neurosurgery and Neuroradiology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497844963

In people with focal epilepsy impairments in social cognition are under-researched. Brain structures that are important for recognizing emotions and understanding social situations can be affected in these patients. Social cognition comprises basic functions such as facial emotion recognition and higher-order functions, e.g., theory of mind (ToM) and affective empathy. If such functions are compromised, severe impairments in daily social interactions may arise. The goals of the planned project are based on open research questions, one the one hand the investigation of basic and higher social cognitive functions with novel paradigms, and their association with localization and lateralization of the epilepsy focus or amygdalar pathology, as well as early and late onset of epilepsy or amygdalar damage. Moreover, cross-modality of deficits in basic social cognition will be explored. On the other hand, we plan to investigate if and how deficits in social cognition influence daily social functioning. Further important and yet unresolved issues pertain to potential correlations between deficits in basic and higher-order social cognitive functions and the specificity of social cognitive deficits, i.e., how strongly is social cognition in epilepsy patients influenced by personality traits, psychiatric disorders and general cognitive abilities, and how specific are social-cognitive deficits to focal epilepsy compared to other clinical groups.We plan to include and compare 140 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, divided into subgroups of patients with and without amygdalar pathology, 50 patients with frontal lobe epilepsy, as well as 50 healthy volunteers. Clinical control groups consist of 50 patients with dissociative seizures and 50 patients with (good grade) subarachnoidal hemorrhage. Basic facial emotion recognition is tested with a novel morph task. Subjects are asked to state which emotion is presented in faces with slowly changing expressions, from neutral to the full expression of one of the six basic emotions. In an auditory task, subjects are required to judge the speaker’s emotion from his or her prosody. The more complex ToM is tested with a video-based task novel to epilepsy research. Facial emotion recognition will be combined with eye tracking, i.e. during the task eye movement parameters such as fixation count and duration for predefined areas of interest will be measured. Affective empathy will be assessed with a questionnaire. Furthermore, perceived loneliness and other indicators of social functioning, as well as various cognitive functions, and personality traits will be assessed.We hope that this study will contribute to a better understanding of social cognition and the consequences of social cognitive deficits for daily living in people with focal epilepsy, and ultimately lead to the formulation of effective therapeutic strategies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants