Social Cognition and Functioning in Alzheimer’s Disease

Background: Impaired social functioning is a core feature of dementia and declines progressively through the disease course, but we do not currently understand the specific causes of this decline and have no effective treatments for social functioning.

Social cognitive impairment, particularly impaired theory of mind, is a likely major cause of this decline and, if this is established, it could be a target for future interventions aiming to maintain social functioning.

Key goals: - To test whether theory of mind deficits, or impairment in other social cognitive domains, are associated with current and subsequent level of social behaviour and functioning in Alzheimer’s disease. - To develop novel approaches to the measurement of social behaviour and function in Alzheimer’s disease and establish their reliability and validity. - To examine neuroimaging correlates of theory of mind impairment in Alzheimer's disease.

Methods: I will construct a new observational cohort study of 207 people with mild Alzheimer’s disease and conduct a detailed social cognition test battery.

I will assess social functioning and behaviour over 1-year using questionnaires, behavioural observation, and remote digital monitoring.

To examine neural correlates of social cognitive decline, I will analyse already-collected structural and functional neuroimaging and social cognition data from my collaborator.