Review
Emotion recognition in Huntington's disease: A systematic review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.06.002Get rights and content
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Abstract

There is increasing interest in the nature of the emotion recognition deficit in Huntington's disease (HD). There are conflicting reports of disproportionate impairments for some emotions in some modalities in HD.

A systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted for studies investigating emotion recognition in HD. Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and Pubmed were searched from 1993 to 2010, and citations and reference lists were searched. 1724 citations were identified.

Sixteen studies were included. In manifest HD evidence of impaired recognition of facial expressions of anger was found consistently, although recognition of all negative emotions (facial and vocal) tended to be impaired. In premanifest HD impairments were inconsistent, but are seen in all facial expressions of negative emotion. Inconsistency may represent the variability inherent in HD although may also be due to between-study differences in methodology.

Current evidence supports the conclusion that recognition of all negative emotions tends to be impaired in HD, particularly in the facial domain. Future work should focus on using more ecologically-valid tests, and testing inter-modality differences.

Highlights

► We reviewed systematically emotion recognition ability in Huntington's disease (HD). ► 16 studies were included. ► Facial anger recognition was most consistently impaired in manifest HD. ► Impairments were often found for other negative emotions using faces and voices. ► Impairments in premanifest HD were inconsistent.

Keywords

Huntington's disease
Emotion recognition
Cognition
Neurodegenerative disorders

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