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Whole-brain Segmentation and Change-point Analysis of Anatomical Brain MRI—Application in Premanifest Huntington's Disease
Published on: June 9, 2018
Emotion recognition and experience in Huntington disease: a voxel-based morphometry study.
Rottraut Ille1, Axel Schäfer, Wilfried Scharmüller
1Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Graz, Austria.
Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience : JPN
|March 17, 2011
Summary
Huntington disease patients struggle with negative emotion recognition due to grey matter atrophy in key brain areas. Affective experience remains normal, but identifying emotions like disgust and anger is impaired.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Neurology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Huntington disease (HD) is characterized by cognitive and motor deficits.
- The neuroanatomic underpinnings of affective processing impairments in HD are not well understood.
- Investigating the link between grey matter volume and emotion deficits in HD is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if deficits in emotion recognition and experience in Huntington disease are linked to specific grey matter volume changes.
- To correlate regional grey matter volume with affective ratings in patients with HD and healthy controls.
Main Methods:
- Voxel-based morphometry was used to assess grey matter volume in 18 symptomatic Huntington disease patients and 18 healthy controls.
- Regional grey matter volumes were correlated with participants' affective ratings.
Main Results:
- Patients with Huntington disease exhibited impaired recognition of negative emotions (disgust, anger, sadness) but normal affective experience.
- Deficits in emotion recognition were associated with regional atrophy in the insula, orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus.
- Patients perceived emotions as less intense and made more classification errors compared to controls.
Conclusions:
- Huntington disease-related emotion recognition deficits are associated with grey matter atrophy in emotion and memory-relevant brain regions.
- A cognitive-affective brain circuit is important for understanding affect recognition impairment in Huntington disease.
- Limitations include a small sample size and modest statistical power.
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