Spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia

Mental rotation has attracted the interest of cognitive research on dystonia, but at the moment, contrasting data are available on whether this complex cognitive ability is impaired in the disorder. Here, we assessed spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia (CD). Patients with CD and healthy controls were required to perform a letter rotation task (spatial mental rotation) and to judge laterality of front-facing and back-facing human images (egocentric mental rotation). CD patients were selectively impaired on letter rotation, whereas they did not differ from controls when judging laterality of both front-facing and back-facing bodies. These findings support the view according to which neural circuits involved in spatial processing are dysfunctional in CD.