Abstract

ARROYO-ANLLO, Eva M.; CHAMORRO-SANCHEZ, Jorge; ORTIZ-ORIA, Vicente Manuel  and  GIL, Roger. Consciousness of others and neurodegenerative diseases. rev.latinoam.psicol. [online]. 2017, vol.49, n.1, pp.61-69. ISSN 0120-0534.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rlp.2015.05.005.

This review presents data about an emerging concept called «Consciousness of others» in Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. Consciousness of others is the awareness that one has of others, and it could be considered key in the understanding of behavioral problems in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Consciousness of others is multifactorial and it includes the following aspects: emotional face recognition, emotional prosody, pragmatic of language, mentalization, empathy, and social reasoning. Subtypes of dementias heterogeneously affect the different aspects of consciousness of others. In general, patients with a behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia presented with more problems of consciousness of others than those with Alzheimer's disease. , patients with Alzheimer's disease showed more difficulties in the aspect of language pragmatic, which was associated with the severity of cognitive impairment, but they could maintain a good social sense. However, patients with frontal variant frontotemporal dementia showed problems in every component of the consciousness of others, thus having important problems to properly regulate their social behavior. Further studies are needed for a better knowledge of the complex relationship between different aspects of consciousness of others in dementias for a better understanding of behavioral troubles.

Keywords : Consciousness; Social cognition; Empathy; Theory of mind; Alzheimer's disease; Frontal dementia.

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