Theory Of Mind In Benign Epilepsy Children With Centrotemporal Spikes

Objective To investigate theory of mind in benign epilepsy children with centrotemporal spikes(BECT).Method 51 BECT patients and 51 healthy controls matched in age,gender and education were studied by neuropsychological test,Yoni task and eye basic emotion discrimination task,correlation analyzed were administered between impaired theory of mind and background tests with in BECT group,To understand whether BECT impaired in theory of mind and the characteristics of its components.Results(1)In Yoni task :compared with healthy controls,BECT got significantly lower score and had the statistical significant in First-order affective ToM and Second-order affective ToM:Aff1[F(1,100)=16.39,p=0.000)],Aff2[F(1,100)=4.66,p=0.033)],However,there were no difference in congnitive ToM:Cog1[F(1,100)=1.06,p=0.306)],Cog2[F(1,100)=2.94,p=0.089)],on the physical control in two groups show no significant difference.(2)In eye basic emotion discrimination task : There was no significant difference between the BECT group[M(Q25,Q75):103(96,108)] and the controls group[M(Q25,Q75):105(96,110)]in the total score of eye basic emotion discrimination task,but got significantly lower score in recognizing sadness[M(Q25,Q75):16(14,17)vs18(15,19),Z=-3.05,p<0.05]and fear[M(Q25,Q75):15(14,17)vs 16(16,18),Z=-2.21,p<0.05].(3)In correlation analysis showed that there was no significant correlation between the age,age of onset,education,seizure total number,MMSE,the Digital Span test,the verbal fluency test and eye basic emotion recognition(r=-0.257-0.908,all p>0.05).Conclusion BECT have impairments of sadness and fear emotion recognition and theory of mind which may be associated with ventromedial prefrontal cortex function damage.