Disturbance of "extrinsic alertness" in Huntington's disease.
Neuropsychological deficits are a main feature of Huntington's disease (HD) with previous data suggesting involvement of attentional functions. Attention can be divided into several different dimensions: intensity, selectivity and supervisory attentional control. These different aspects of attention were investigated in a group of 13 patients with HD and 13 healthy matched control subjects. HD patients were impaired mostly for the intensity dimension: contrary to controls, and like other neurological patient groups, they were not able to speed up their reaction times when an auditory warning stimulus preceded a visual target which suggests a deficit in 'extrinsic alertness.' In addition less severe impairments were found in the dimensions selectivity and supervisory attentional control.
Department of Neuropsychology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany. sandra.mueller@nat.uni-magdeburg.de
Sandra V
SV
Müller
Andrea
A
Jung
Jens
J
Preinfalk
Hans
H
Kolbe
Maria
M
Ridao-Alonso
Reinhard
R
Dengler
Thomas F
TF
Münte
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis