Mind-Reading Ability and Structural Connectivity Changes in Aging

Abstract

The Mind-Reading ability through the eyes is an important component of the affective Theory of Mind (ToM), which allows people to infer the other’s mental state from the eye gaze. The aim of the present study was to investigate to which extent age-associated structural brain changes impact this ability and to determine if this association is related to executive functions in elderly subjects. For this purpose, Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to determine both gray matter and white matter (WM) areas associated with aging. The resulting areas have been included in a subsequent correlation analysis to detect the brain regions whose structure was associated with the Mind-Reading ability through the eyes, assessed with the Italian version of the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” (RME) test, in a sample of 36 healthy subjects ranging from 24 to 79 years of age. The analysis resulted in three important findings: (1) the performance to the RME test is relatively stable across the decades 20–70 (despite a slight decrease of this ability with aging) and independent from executive functions; (2) structural brain imaging demonstrated the involvement of a great number of cortical ToM areas for the execution of the RME test: the bilateral precentral gyrus, the bilateral posterior insula, the left superior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus, which also showed a significant volume decrease with age; (3) an age and task-related decline in WM connectivity on left fronto-temporal portion of the brain. Our results confirm the age-related structural modifications of the brain and show that these changes have an influence on the Mind-Reading ability through the eyes.

White Matter and Social Cognition

“…It is also worth noting that healthy WM in the corpus callosum (CC) appears to be important for social cognition, as our literature review shows apparent involvement of the CC in both embodied cognition (Baggio et al, 2012;Crespi et al, 2016;Fujino et al, 2014;Mike et al, 2013;Parkinson & Wheatley, 2014;Takeuchi et al, 2013) and ToM (Cabinio et al, 2015;Mike et al, 2013;Scheibel et al, 2011). This is consistent with research on autism and agenesis of the corpus callosum, which both reveal that corpus callosum abnormalities can cause severe impairments in social functioning in the real world (Paul et al, 2007;Travers et al, 2012).…”

“…Benton tests, Philadelphia battery) (Gomez et al, 2015;Grossi et al, 2014;Thomas et al, 2008;Unger et al, 2016), and face memory tasks (e.g. Cambridge tests) (Gomez et al, 2015;Song et al, 2015;Unger et al, 2016); empathy was assessed by the "empathy quotient" (Chou et al, 2011;Herbet, Lafargue, Moritz-Gasser, Menjot de Champfleur, et al, 2015;Nakagawa et al, 2015;Takeuchi et al, 2013), the "interpersonal reactivity index" (Fujino et al, 2014;Parkinson & Wheatley, 2014), and the "trait emotional intelligence questionnaire" (empathy subsets) (Olszewski et al, 2017); mentalizing abilities were evaluated by "false belief" stories (Grosse Wiesmann et al, 2017), cartoon animations Scheibel et al, 2011), comic strip vignettes (Herbet et al, 2014;Kana et al, 2014), and the "reading the mind in the eyes" task (Anderson et al, 2015;Cabinio et al, 2015;Herbet et al, 2014;Mike et al, 2013;Yordanova et al, 2017). Such a wide variety of seemingly disparate disorders as well as diverse behavioral paradigms provide excellent opportunities for exploring the relationship between WM tracts and social functions.…”

“…Another study revealed that variation in the microstructure of the left UF positively correlates with inter-individual variance of "reading the mind in the eyes" task performance in 4-year-olds, but not in 6-year-olds, suggesting that the UF might be more important for the emergence, but not maintenance, of ToM function (Anderson et al, 2015). In addition, age-related declines in ToM abilities throughout the lifespan have been associated with decreased FA in bilateral UF, right IFOF, and right SLF (Cabinio et al, 2015).…”

“…WM measurements can be measureably affected by participant's intelligence (Penke et al, 2012), handedness (McKay, Iwabuchi, Häberling, Corballis, & Kirk, 2017), socioeconomic status (Ursache & Noble, 2016), and head motion (Yendiki, Koldewyn, Kakunoori, Kanwisher, & Fischl, 2014). Recent studies also show that WM structures underlying social cognition vary across age (Cabinio et al, 2015;Charlton et al, 2009;Thomas et al, 2008) and gender (Chou et al, 2011). These confounding factors should be explicitly matched between groups or regressed out during analysis.…”

Peer Interaction Does Not Always Improve Children’s Mental State Talk Production in Oral Narratives. A Study in 6- to 10-Year-Old Italian Children

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals’ mind-reading ability grows with age, even beyond school years (adolescence and young adulthood, Valle et al, 2015; and adulthood and elderly age, Cabinio et al, 2015). …”