Year: 2025
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND The insula, due to its numerous connections with other regions of the brain, has been shown to mediate the execution of a variety of cognitive processes, including executive functions, attention, visual-spatial functions, memory, language and also social cognition. Social cognition is a broad-ranging concept that encompasses a wide variety of functions, ranging from fundamental perceptual tasks such as facial emotion recognition to higher-order inferential processes concerning the mental states, intentions, and emotions of others. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the emotion recognition ability of patients with insular tumors, taking into account the influence of particular clinical and demographic variables such as laterality of the lesion, age, sex and education. MATERIAL AND METHODS A group of 51 patients (18 women, 33 men) with insular gliomas (28 left, 23 right; WHO G2: 24, G3 14, G4: 13) was examined during their hospitalization, one day before the surgery. A demographically matched control group (n = 43; 22 women, 21 men) of healthy subjects was also included in the study. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) was used to assess the ability of emotion recognition. RESULTS In the emotion recognition task patients scored significantly lower than healthy subjects (M = 21.02 vs 25.58; t = -4.934; p < 0.001). Furthermore, patients with a tumor in the left hemisphere demonstrated significantly higher scores than those with a tumor in the right hemisphere (M = 22.70 vs M = 19.04; t = 2.478; p = 0.008), despite no significant differences in age, education or gender between the two groups. Correlation analyses revealed a significant association between education (Spearman’s rho = 0.623, p < 0.001) and age (Spearman’s rho = -0.349, p = 0.014) with emotion recognition scores, indicating that patients with higher levels of education and younger age demonstrated superior performance in this domain. We also performed comparisons of patients according to WHO grade of malignancy (LGG vs HGG) - no statistically significant differences were obtained (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION Lesions in the insular area may be associated with a decline of some aspects of social cognition. As a consequence, patient functioning in the hospital and communication between the patient and healthcare professionals may be affected, and these factors should be taken into consideration in patient management. In order to detect such difficulties, neuropsychological assessment should be a standard element of preoperative diagnostics. For patients who experience these difficulties, social cognition skills training should be added to the medical recommendations.
Source: Neuro-Oncology
Authors: A Olejnik, A Bala, T Dziedzic, P Kunert
Institutions: University of Warsaw, Medical University of Warsaw
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: G1005326806, G5508342132, G6121873459
OpenAlex ID: W4414792296
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