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Reorientation of attention in Huntington disease
Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis1, Andrew Churchyard, Edmond Chiu
1Psychology Department, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. nellie.georgiou@med.monash.edu.au
Insights
Patients with Huntington disease (HD) may struggle to direct attention to their left side. Early-stage HD patients generally maintain attention orientation abilities, despite slower reaction times.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neurology
Background:
- Huntington disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting cognition.
- Attention deficits are common in neurological conditions, but their extent in early HD is unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify attention orientation difficulties in Huntington disease patients.
- To investigate attentional costs and benefits using a vibrotactile Posner paradigm.
Main Methods:
- Participants responded to vibrotactile stimuli after valid, neutral, or invalid precues.
- Attentional benefits and costs were calculated based on precue validity.
- Reaction times were measured for left and right-hand stimuli.
Main Results:
- Patients with HD and controls showed similar benefits from valid precues.
- HD patients were slower overall but exhibited a specific deficit orienting attention to the left side.
- Crossed-arm configurations were too challenging for HD patients.
Conclusions:
- Early-stage Huntington disease patients may have specific difficulties allocating attention to their left, non-dominant hand.
- Minimal caudate damage in early HD may not impair general attention orientation abilities.
Objectives And Background:
This experiment sought to quantify the extent to which patients with Huntington disease (HD) have difficulties in orienting attention, via a vibrotactile version of a Posner-type cost-benefit paradigm.
Method:
Participants were required to push a button in response to a vibration delivered to the index finger of either hand. Prior to each stimulus vibration, a precue (valid, neutral, or invalid) was delivered to the finger. Benefits and costs were calculated from valid and invalid precues.
Results:
Although patients with HD were overall slower than the controls, their performance was no different; both patients and controls demonstrated increased benefits from valid compared with invalid and neutral cues. Of interest was the finding that patients, unlike controls, performed significantly slower with the cue presented to the left compared with the right side. The crossed arm configuration proved to be too difficult for the patients with HD, and thus an analysis on these data was not permitted.
Conclusions:
Patients may experience difficulties in allocating attentional resources toward their left nonpreferred hand. Overall, findings demonstrate that patients with HD, with minimal caudate damage at early stages of disease onset, may not experience problems in their ability to orient attention.
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