Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the hypothesis that patients with PD may show difficulties in tasks related to affective theory of mind especially in moderate/advanced PD stages.

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD), the commonest movement disorder, is frequently associated with cognitive impairments in theory of mind (ToM), decision-making, and executive processing. TOM is an important concept within social cognition and refers to the ability to formulate mental states to oneself and others. While affective ToM is the specific ability to represent own and others’ emotions and feelings. However, cognitive and affective components of ToM ability in neurodegenerative disorders has been assessed only recently.

Methods: We searched PubMed, ISI and Scopus databases filtering the results manually one by one followed by both abstract and full-text screening to get the best results.

Results: Results showed PD patients had more difficulties with affective ToM than healthy controls. Early PD patients outperformed moderate PD patients, but with no statistical significance when controlling for other variables.

Conclusions: Our final conclusion is that affective ToM may be impaired in PD but further investigations are needed to settle this debate. Those findings might be helpful in developing educational and medical care programs for PD patients in the future with considering social cognition training in those patients.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/affective-theory-of-mind-in-parkinsons-disease/