Accelerated time-course of inhibition of return in Huntington's disease

A non-predictive peripheral cueing paradigm was used to evaluate visuospatial attentional deficits in symptomatic HD patients, employing spatially valid and invalid visual cues over a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) to elicit a saccadic response. Although both patients and controls demonstrated initial facilitation for valid versus invalid cues following the shortest SOA, and a performance decrement (inhibition of return), at the longest SOA, a clear differentiation between these groups was found for the intermediate SOAs. Unlike controls, where IOR manifested between 350 and 1000 ms, IOR was evident as early as 150 ms for HD patients. Further, the benefit of valid cueing correlated significantly with the level of impairment. Although patients exhibited poor fixation, principally attributable to saccadic intrusions, they were capable of appropriately suppressing a purely stimulus-driven response to the cue. A similar proportion of erroneous saccades to the cue were generated by both groups prior to stimulus onset, also correlating significantly with level of impairment. These results are discussed with respect to neural processes implicated in spatial cueing and within the context of reduced inhibitory activity of the BG in HD.