The emerging role of the cerebellum in the affective theory of mind in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia

We previously documented the relation between functional connectivity changes within mentalizing cerebello-cerebral networks and impaired performance on affective Theory of Mind (ToM) in patients with behavioral variant of Frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). In the present study, we further extend our previous observations, with the attempt to also disentangle among affective and cognitive ToM components and better clarify the cerebellar role in social cognition alterations observed in bvFTD. By using a ToM task which allows to evaluate the two ToM components, we showed that both cognitive and affective ToM are altered in bvFTD patients. Notably, we demonstrated for the first time that FC changes between core social cerebellar and cerebral regions may selectively underlie altered affective ToM in bvFTD thus providing additional insight on the putative role of cerebello-cerebral mentalizing network in social alterations of patients.