Ida Unmack Larsen1, Tua Vinther-Jensen2, Anders Gade1, Jørgen Erik Nielsen3, Asmus Vogel3. 1. Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. 2. Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Section of Neurogenetics, University of Copenhagen. 3. Neurogenetics Clinic, Danish Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Emotion recognition has been widely studied in Huntington disease (HD), but only a few studies have investigated more complex social cognition and, when so, exclusively in manifest HD. The present study sought to investigate social-cognitive functions in a large, consecutive cohort of premanifest and manifest HD gene expansion carriers using tests assessing sarcasm detection, theory of mind (ToM), and emotion recognition. METHOD: Fifty manifest, 50 premanifest HD gene expansion carriers, and 39 at risk gene expansion negative healthy controls were included. All participants were tested with sarcasm detection, ToM, and emotion recognition tasks. Between-group comparisons of test performances and correlation analyses of test performances and disease burden scores were made. RESULTS: Group comparisons showed significant differences in performances on the social-cognitive tests between manifest HD gene expansion carriers and healthy controls, but differences in performances between premanifest HD gene expansion carriers and healthy controls were not statistically significant. Correlation analysis showed that the worse test performances were associated with higher disease burden scores in all HD gene expansion carriers. CONCLUSION: Our findings support a theory of impaired social-cognitive functions in the early stages of HD. Test performances decreased with increasing disease burden in all HD gene expansion carriers, suggesting that social-cognitive tests may be useful for tracking disease progression. Simple emotion recognition tasks are just as sensitive for measuring social-cognitive deficits as more complex measures, but knowledge of the quality of social-cognitive impairments in HD can be of great importance to both patients and caregivers. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved.
OBJECTIVE: Emotion recognition has been widely studied in Huntington disease (HD), but only a few studies have investigated more complex social cognition and, when so, exclusively in manifest HD. The present study sought to investigate social-cognitive functions in a large, consecutive cohort of premanifest and manifest HD gene expansion carriers using tests assessing sarcasm detection, theory of mind (ToM), and emotion recognition. METHOD: Fifty manifest, 50 premanifest HD gene expansion carriers, and 39 at risk gene expansion negative healthy controls were included. All participants were tested with sarcasm detection, ToM, and emotion recognition tasks. Between-group comparisons of test performances and correlation analyses of test performances and disease burden scores were made. RESULTS: Group comparisons showed significant differences in performances on the social-cognitive tests between manifest HD gene expansion carriers and healthy controls, but differences in performances between premanifest HD gene expansion carriers and healthy controls were not statistically significant. Correlation analysis showed that the worse test performances were associated with higher disease burden scores in all HD gene expansion carriers. CONCLUSION: Our findings support a theory of impaired social-cognitive functions in the early stages of HD. Test performances decreased with increasing disease burden in all HD gene expansion carriers, suggesting that social-cognitive tests may be useful for tracking disease progression. Simple emotion recognition tasks are just as sensitive for measuring social-cognitive deficits as more complex measures, but knowledge of the quality of social-cognitive impairments in HD can be of great importance to both patients and caregivers. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved.
Authors: Antonio Lucio Teixeira; Leonardo Cruz de Souza; Natalia Pessoa Rocha; Erin Furr-Stimming; Edward C Lauterbach Journal: Dement Neuropsychol Date: 2016 Oct-Dec