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Introduction
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a key structure for appropriate social behavior (Bechara et al., 1994; Rolls, 2000). Behavioral changes caused by OFC damage generally have been categorized into forced collectionism (hoarding) (Cohen et al., 1999; Hahm et al., 2001; Volle et al., 2002), disinhibited behavior (Namiki et al., 2008; Poletti, Lucetti and Bonuccelli, 2010), pathologic gambling (Floris et al., 2008), obsessive compulsive behavior (Ogai et al., 2005), behavioral characteristics of autism, psychopathy (Blair and Cipolotti, 2000; Umeda et al., 2010), and impulsiveness (Berlin et al., 2004). The common factor in behavioral changes in the different studies is the inability to control or correct behavior on given feedback.
In the last decade, neuropsychological research (Hanna-Pladdy, 2007) focused on the question, â[euro]~To what extent are changes in behavior, following lesions in the OFC, related to cognitive dysfunctions?â[euro](TM) The general view in clinical neuropsychology is that changes in behavior, especially following frontal lobe lesion, are strongly related to deficits in executive functions. However, despite the above-described changes in behavior, most patients appear to be cognitively intact, at least when assessed by means of standard neuropsychological tasks appealing to executive functions (Blair and Cipolotti, 2000; Fujii et al., 2005; Reid-Arndt et al., 2007; Namiki et al., 2008).
In their elaborate review, Zald and Andreotti (2010) suggest that there are at least three cognitive functions that seem to be related to OFC damage; they also recommend tests that assess specific cognitive function. (1) Learning and adapting to changing reinforcement contingencies. The test they recommend is the reversal learning task (Rolls et al., 1994), which measures the ability to utilize cues in the environment to predict future rewarding or aversive events (Berlin et al., 2004). (2) Decision-making tasks. They recommend the Iowa gambling task (IGT), which measures the ability to regulate behavioral responses in the context of changing reinforcement contingencies, based on rewards and punishment (Bechara et al., 1994). (3) Social processing and theory of mind (ToM). In ToM, the ability to attribute mental states and intentions to oneself and others and the recognition of expressed emotion are the two core components of social processing and essential for human non-verbal communication (Frith and Frith, 2003). The most used test for ToM is the faux pas test (Stone et al.,...