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Is H untington's disease associated with deficits in theory of mind?
Author(s) -
Eddy C. M.,
Sira Mahalingappa S.,
Rickards H. E.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.2012.01659.x
Subject(s) - theory of mind , psychology , executive dysfunction , verbal fluency test , executive functions , huntington's disease , social cognition , developmental psychology , task (project management) , fluency , cognition , cognitive psychology , disease , neuropsychology , psychiatry , medicine , mathematics education , management , pathology , economics
Objectives People with Huntington's disease ( HD ) can exhibit interpersonal difficulties and deficits in recognizing emotional facial expressions. We investigated whether individuals with HD exhibit impairments in the understanding of other people's mental states, an aspect of Theory of Mind (ToM). Materials and methods Sixteen patients with HD and sixteen healthy controls completed two ToM tasks. One task involved recognising socially inappropriate behaviour and the other task required participants to judge complex mental states from photographs of people's eyes alone. To assess relationships between executive function and T o M , participants completed measures of verbal fluency, working memory and inhibition. T he P roblem B ehaviours A ssessment‐short form (Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychol Behav Neurol, 14, 2001and 219) was completed twice using information from patients and their close relatives (where possible) to identify relationships between T o M impairment and behavioural problems. Results Patients with HD made significantly more errors on T o M tasks than controls, exhibiting difficulties in judging the social appropriateness of story character's behaviour and problems inferring complex mental states from photographs of people's eyes. Patients with HD also exhibited executive dysfunction. However, there was little evidence that executive impairments were related to T o M deficits. No correlations were apparent between problem behaviours and T o M errors. Conclusions HD is associated with deficits in T o M . Furthermore, some of patients' ToM difficulties appear independent of executive dysfunction.