Social Cognition and Executive Functions in Alcohol Use Disorders - Transverse Study

Plain-language summary

Over the past few years, researchers and clinicians have stressed the major role of executive and social cognition impairments in the development and the maintenance of Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD). Executive functions are defined as functions for behavioral control that help us to adjust the investigator's behavior in a flexible way in non-familiar, non-routine situations. Executive functions encompass different cognitive processes, such as inhibition, mental flexibility, updating, planification, abstraction, rule deduction or organization. Studies comparing AUD patients to healthy controls have shown that AUD usually is associated with a large range of deficits. More recently studies have also emphasized a weakness of executive functioning among healthy participants with a positive family history of AUD. Social cognition refers to all cognitive processes that enable us to communicate and to interact with social environment in an appropriate manner. Among the most common social cognition sub-components are theory of mind (defined as the capacity to understand other people's mental states as for instance beliefs and desires), empathy, and emotion recognition. Emotional and interpersonal difficulties have a high prevalence in AUD and chronic alcohol consumption is often linked to social conflicts, misunderstandings, a lack of social support and isolation. Indeed, AUD patients have difficulties in understanding their own mental states and emotions as well as those of their social environment. Few studies have investigated the interdependency between these cognitive impairments in AUD while a better understanding of the link between executive functions and social cognition seems crucial in order to better characterize the nature of AUD patients' deficits and thus their caring.

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