The relationship between alexithymia, empathy and moral judgment in patients with multiple sclerosis

Gleichgerrcht, Ezequiel; Tomashitis, Brett; Sinay, Vladimiro

doi:10.1111/ene.12745

Cited by 58 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…No specific areas of the brain were affected by demyelination or atrophy among patients with lower levels of empathy. These findings have added more data to the literature, and are in agreement with previous reports 10,11 . However, it must be highlighted that this study is not free of potential bias: patients and controls may have had difficulty in expressing their feelings in the short sentences used by this instrument.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Patients with multiple sclerosis present low levels of empathy

Almeida

Going

Fragoso

2016

Arq. Neuro-Psiquiatr.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neuroimmunological disease that mainly affects young adults, leading to neurological disabilities over the course of their lives. Many psychiatric conditions have been reported in patients with MS, but there are remarkably few studies assessing empathy among these patients. Methods This is a single center, cross-sectional study, of 34 patients with MS and 34 matched control subjects. A specific questionnaire (empathy quotient) was used. Results Patients with MS showed significantly lower levels of empathy. This finding was not correlated with disease duration, degree of disability, drugs for treating MS or lesion load on resonance magnetic imaging. Conclusion Decreased empathy is a frequent condition in patients with MS and should be addressed in order to diminish the psychosocial burden of this neurological disease.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Patients with multiple sclerosis present low levels of empathy

Almeida

Going

Fragoso

2016

Arq. Neuro-Psiquiatr.

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“…Subtle difficulties in recognizing others' emotional expressions, empathic abilities, reading their complex mental states and understanding pragmatic language statements (such as irony) can contribute to interpersonal problems observed in MS. Evidence also suggests that MS patients might also subjectively report difficulties in recognizing their own emotions and empathy (Chahraoui et al 2014;Gleichgerrcht et al 2015). White and gray matter pathology in MS affects multiple brain regions and disrupts a number of neural networks that play key roles in social cognition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis: a Meta-Analysis

et al. 2016

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with cognitive decline and impairment in social functioning. Accumulating evidence suggests that patients with MS are impaired in social cognition, including theory of mind (ToM) and emotion recognition. In this meta-analysis of 24 studies, facial emotion recognition and ToM performances of 989 patients with MS and 836 healthy controls were compared. MS was associated with significant impairments with medium effect sizes in ToM (d = 0.57) and facial emotion recognition (d = 0.61). Among individual emotions recognition of fear and anger were particularly impaired. The severity of social cognitive deficits was significantly associated with non-social cognitive impairment. These deficits in social cognition may underpin difficulties in social functioning in MS. However, there is a need for further studies investigating the longitudinal evolution of social cognitive deficits and their neural correlates in MS.

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“…Patients with RRMS demonstrated significantly lower levels of empathy toward others and fantasy compared to healthy subjects [82]. An earlier study by Beatty conducted in 1989 with MS patients assessed their ability to identify facial affect by viewing photographs depicting basic emotional states.…”

Section: Relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (Rrms)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Paradoxically, regarding the emotion "fear" they showed better results than controls [6]. Gleichgerrcht et al found that MS subjects (patients n = 38; controls n = 38) had significantly higher self-oriented personal distress (p < 0.01) and higher levels of alexithymia compared to controls [82].…”

Section: Relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (Rrms)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Cognition Impairments in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Comparison with Imaging Studies, Disease Duration and Grade of Disability

Ignatova¹,

Todorova²,

Surchev³

2016

Trending Topics in Multiple Sclerosis

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Cognitive impairments in multiple sclerosis (MS) are heterogeneous and their rate varies between 43% and 70%. A less studied aspect of cognition is social cognition, which is not a uniform theoretical construct. It includes emotion perception, prosody, empathy, theory of mind (ToM) and assessment of mood. In addition to progressive physical disability, social cognitive impairments are a reason for job loss in 24-80% of patients with MS, increased divorce rate, dissolution of partnerships and social communication difficulties.Social cognitive impairments are the result of disruptions in the mentalization network at the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and/or genetic level, which can lead to malfunctions in the dopaminergic-serotoninergic system and to compromising the development of neuroanatomical targets within the network. The wide dissemination of demyelinating lesions and cortical thinning typical of patients with MS often lead to anatomic and functional disorders of the above-mentioned specific brain structures. A correlation has been established among specific cortical areas involved in emotion identification from facial expression (right and left fusiform face area, frontal eye), emotion processing (right entorhinal cortex) and socially relevant information (left temporal pole). The most active brain region involved in social cognitive processing is the medal frontal cortex (MFC), which is described as the brain's social cognitive center. During performance of various sociocognitive tasks for mental state attribution, common areas of increased activation in the medial prefrontal gyrus and the temporoparietal junctions are registered bilaterally, while the area of the medial prefrontal cortex (the paracingulate cortex) is the only region uniquely activated by the performance of ToM.Most MRI studies of patients with MS found a correlation between the cognitive and/or affective disorders, on the one hand, and lesion localization, total lesion load, or cerebral atrophy, on the other. A significant correlation was also reported between © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.abnormal activities in specific cortical zones on fMRI, on the one hand, and clinical manifestation, conventional MRI findings and behavioral changes, on the other. Altered patterns of brain activity were found in all clinical phenotypes of MS, including when cognitive abilities were intact and/or restored, social cognitive dysfunction in MS actually affects all stages of the disease and all types of clinical course. The cortical plastic changes are a dynamic phenomenon that can be modulated by external factors. This phenomenon would facilitate the mapping of individual strategies for adequate treatment and rehabilitation of each patient.

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The relationship between alexithymia, empathy and moral judgment in patients with multiple sclerosis

Abstract: Understanding such complex interactions between individual dispositions and moral cognition has the potential to contribute to the development of better assessment and intervention strategies for MS patients, enhancing quality of life by achieving better social participation.

Cited by 58 publications

References 62 publications

Patients with multiple sclerosis present low levels of empathy

Patients with multiple sclerosis present low levels of empathy

Social Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis: a Meta-Analysis

Social Cognition Impairments in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Comparison with Imaging Studies, Disease Duration and Grade of Disability

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