Neuropsychologie des représentations mentales de soi et des autres

Download or read book Neuropsychologie des représentations mentales de soi et des autres written by Céline Duval and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nowadays, the great attention paid to the human consciousness conducts researchers exploring the self and theory of mind (ToM). The main goals of this thesis were to assess age-induced changes on the Self in memory (1) and ToM (2) and to explore both entities in the semantic dementia (SD) (3). Thanks to an original methodology. In the first part dedicated to the Self concept, we showed that normal aging affects only some of its characteristics. We also demonstrated that answering to the question ‘Who am I?’, considered as a general personal identity measure, involves episodic memory and self-representations in the future. The second part of this thesis, dedicated to the ToM concept, was based on the “cognitive ToM” versus “affective ToM” dichotomy. In this section, we found both ToM dimensions to be impaired alongside with normal aging. However, a direct aging effect was reported for the second-order cognitive ToM, while this effect was indirect considering the other ToM dimensions. Finally, exploring the self and ToM concepts for the first time in SD, we first reported a relative preservation of patients’ personal identity although the future part of their identity was altered. Then, the study of ToM in SD patients highlighted the impairment of the cognitive ToM, contrasting with a relative preservation of the affective ToM. Furthermore, these results were consistent with the patients’ atrophy located in the left temporal pole but not-in the right one. These explorations of the self and ToM concepts in SD suggested a dysfunction of the simulation mechanism in this pathology. Overall, this thesis deals with the links between memory, self- and others-consciousness