Abnormal visual scanning and impaired mental state recognition in pre-manifest Huntington disease.
Exp Brain Res
; 239(1): 141-150, 2021 Jan.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33130907
ABSTRACT
Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder that affects not only the motor but also the cognitive and the neuropsychiatric domain. In particular, deficits in mental state recognition may emerge already at early pre-manifest stages of the disease. The aim of this research was to explore the relation between visual scanning behavior and complex mental state recognition in individuals with pre-manifest HD (preHD). Eighteen preHD and eighteen age- and gender-matched healthy controls took the revised "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test while their eye-movements were tracked. In addition to the expected deficits in mental state recognition, preHD showed abnormalities concerning all three scanning variables we considered, namely the absolute number of fixations (FC), the average fixation duration (AFD), and the percentage of time spent fixating (FTR). In preHD, FC and FTR but not AFD predicted mental state recognition over and beyond general disease-related declines in cognition and motor functioning. Notably, preHD showed abnormal vertical and horizontal fixation patterns, and these patterns predicted mental state recognition, suggesting the involvement of mechanisms related to the embodied processing of emotional stimuli. Overall, our results suggest that impaired facial mental state recognition in pre-manifest HD is partly due to emotional-motivational factors affecting the visual scanning of facial expressions.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Enfermedad de Huntington
/
Reconocimiento Facial
Tipo de estudio:
Prognostic_studies
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Exp Brain Res
Año:
2021
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Italia