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Embodied emotion impairment in Huntington's Disease
Iris Trinkler1, Sévérine Devignevielle1, Amal Achaibou2
1École Normale Supérieure, Institut d'Étude de la Cognition, Paris, France; Inserm U955-E01, Institut Mondor de Recherche Biomédicale, Créteil, France; Université Paris Est Créteil, Medical Faculty, Créteil, France.
Summary
Patients with Huntington's Disease (HD) show impaired emotion expression and recognition, linked to motor deficits. This suggests emotion processing issues in HD stem from motor impairments, not internal experience.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Embodied Cognition
Background:
- Theories of embodied cognition link emotion perception to motor re-experiencing.
- Huntington's Disease (HD) patients exhibit deficits in emotion recognition and, recently reported, emotion expression.
- Investigating the motoric basis of these expression deficits is crucial for understanding HD's emotion processing impairments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if impaired emotion expression in Huntington's Disease (HD) patients is related to motor-level impairments.
- To compare voluntary emotion expression, imitation, and mimicry using electromyography (EMG) in HD patients and controls.
- To correlate motoric emotion processing with emotion recognition, alexithymia, and brain structure.
Main Methods:
- Electromyography (EMG) measured voluntary emotion expression, facial image imitation, and spontaneous mimicry in 28 HD patients and 24 controls.
- Emotion recognition and alexithymia were assessed using questionnaires.
- Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) correlated emotion scores with cerebral grey matter volume.
Main Results:
- EMG confirmed impaired voluntary emotion expression in HD patients.
- Imitation and mimicry were equally impaired in HD patients and correlated with recognition deficits.
- Alexithymia scores were normal, suggesting intact internal emotion experience; recognition correlated with brain volume in the caudate and action representation areas.
Conclusions:
- Emotion deficits in Huntington's Disease (HD) are tied to the motoric level of expression and recognition.
- Impaired nonverbal communication (both understanding and being understood) may result from these dual deficits.
- Internal emotion experience appears spared, indicating motor system involvement in HD's emotion processing impairments.