Bertrand-Gauvin, Caroline <br/><br/>
Stroke and social cognition: A neuropsychological perspective 

 -  2014.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 41 
<br/><br/> Social cognition is essential for establishing and maintaining harmonious human relations. However, this capacity to build representations of the relations existing between oneself and others and to use them in a flexible manner to guide social behavior remains clinically underestimated. Theory of mind and pragmatic skills of communication are both responsible for these representations. A longitudinal multiple case study shed light on the possible presence of deficits of these representational capacities following a stroke. The purpose of this study was to better identify certain social cognition constituents, aimed at facilitating a personalized clinical follow-up. The results indicate that disorders of social cognition can be present no matter which hemisphere is affected. The two participants that presented the biggest difficulties in social cognition tasks both had a stroke in the frontoparietal area, but one had it in the right hemisphere and the other one in the left one. Deficits can also arise jointly or independently in one area or the other, and their functional recovery might require several months or even several years. One of the participants took two years to normalize. It is also suggested that a depressive state can negatively influence social cognition abilities. These results remind us of the importance of considering the hemispherical collaboration that subserves social processes.