The relationship between social cognition, bodily movement and dopamine

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Schuster, Bianca A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5584-2078 (2022). The relationship between social cognition, bodily movement and dopamine. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

A wide range of clinical conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease or schizophrenia (amongst others), show co-occurring socio-cognitive and motor symptoms. In addition, all of these populations have been associated with a dopamine-system dysfunction. However, it is currently unclear whether co-occurring symptoms across socio-cognitive and motor domains in these populations relate to the same underlying mechanism (e.g., dysfunctional dopamine signaling) or originate from distinct root causes that lead to seemingly related symptoms. Across four empirical chapters, this thesis explores the link between motor- and social-cognitive function in healthy individuals and in pharmacological models of neuropathology.
The first chapter provides a general introduction into the existing literature on the relationship between social and motor function in healthy and clinical populations. The second chapter addresses the relationship between motor function and mental state attribution. Because existing tasks for the assessment of mental state attribution do not allow the comparison of stimulus and participant movements, first the development of an adaptation of a classic mentalizing task, which is suitable to track both observer and animator kinematics, is outlined. The chapter then explores the role of stimulus kinematics and observer-animator kinematic similarity, alongside other important stimulus characteristics, in successful mental state attribution in this task in healthy adults.
The third chapter examines potential contributions of atypical dopamine signaling to mental state attribution differences in clinical disorders by pharmacological dopamine depletion in healthy adults. Furthermore, this chapter discusses why dopamine imbalances may impact mental state attribution independently of motor function.
The fourth chapter gives insights into the route via which dopaminergic dysfunctions may affect emotion recognition in conditions like Parkinson’s disease by pharmacological manipulation of dopamine in healthy participants. Independent effects of dopamine depletion on locomotion and emotion recognition from PLW stimuli, as well as correlations between these effects are discussed.
Chapter five comprises a series of studies which explore the contributions of one’s own gait kinematics to emotion recognition from others’ gait, using smartphone accelerometers to measure participants’ gait kinematics and point-light-walker (PLW) stimuli to assess individuals’ emotion perception from whole-body motion information. The chapter further addresses a current shortcoming of the existing literature, which is the lack of knowledge about expression and perception of genuinely felt (as opposed to acted) whole-body motion.
The last chapter integrates all findings presented in this thesis with a specific focus on the role of dopamine as a potential mediator in the relationship between motor function and social cognition. Finally, implications for disorders with dopamine dysfunctions and future research are discussed.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):