Selective impairment of attentional networks of alerting in Wilson's disease

Wilson's disease (WD) is typically affected by attention, which is one of the cognitive domains. The Attention Network Test (ANT) was developed to measure the functioning of the following three individual attentional networks: orienting, alerting, and executive control. The ANT has been used in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions; however, it has not been used in WD. The aim of this study was to investigate the attentional function of WD patients, and 35 patients with early and moderate neurological WD, as well as 35 gender-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls performed the ANT. Remarkable differences between the patients and healthy controls were observed in the alerting network (p = 0.007) in contrast the differences in the orienting (p = 0.729) and executive control (p = 0.888) networks of visual attention. The mean reaction time in the ANT was significantly longer in the WD patients than in the controls (p<0.001, 0.001). In the WD patients, there was an effect specifically on the alerting domain of the attention network, whereas the orienting and executive control domains were not affected.