Moving across disorders: A cross-sectional study of cognition in early onset ataxia and dystonia

Early onset ataxia (EOA) and Early Onset Dystonia (EOD) are movement disorders developing in young people (age <25 per definition). These disorders result from dysfunctional networks involving the cerebellum and basal ganglia. As these structures are also important for cognition, cognitive deficits can be expected in EOA and EOD. EOA and EOD sometimes co-occur, but in those cases the predominant phenotype is determining. A pending question is whether predominantly EOA and EOD have different profiles of cognitive impairment.

We investigated whether cognitive functions were impaired in patients with either predominant EOA or predominant EOD and whether cognitive profiles differed between both patient groups.

The sample consisted of 26 EOA and 26 EOD patients with varying etiology but similar duration and severity of the disorder. Patient samples were compared to a group of 26 healthy controls, all matched on age and gender. All participants underwent neuropsychological testing for verbal intelligence, memory, working memory, attention/cognitive speed, executive functions, emotion recognition and language.

EOA and EOD patients both performed significantly worse than healthy controls on tests of verbal intelligence, working memory and executive functions. Additionally, attention/cognitive speed and emotion recognition were impaired in the EOA group. Compared to EOD, EOA patients performed worse on attention/cognitive speed and verbal intelligence.

Our results show overall similar profiles of cognitive deficits in both patient groups, but deficits were more pronounced in the patients with EOA. This suggests that more severe cognitive impairment is related to more severe cerebellar network dysfunction.