Deficient recognition of emotional prosody in primary focal dystonia.
BACKGROUND
Primary dystonia is a movement disorder attributed mainly to basal ganglia dysfunction. Besides motor control, striatopallidal structures are known to implement also non-motor functions including processing of cognitive and emotional information. Previous research has already demonstrated deficient recognition of emotional faces in patients with primary focal dystonia. However, it remains elusive if emotional prosody processing in dystonia is also affected.


METHODS
In this study, 30 patients with primary cervical dystonia (CD) and 30 healthy control subjects (HC) had to classify auditory presented words according to their emotional prosody (angry, happy, relaxed, sad).


RESULTS
Analysis of hit rates and reaction times revealed a significantly poorer performance of patients with CD in judging angrily intonated words. Additional psychological assessment (SCL-90 R) demonstrated a higher level of psychological distress in patients with CD who displayed symptoms of somatization, anxiety and depression.


CONCLUSIONS
Together these findings bring further insight into the basal ganglia involvement in processing of emotional prosody and emphasize the importance to identify the psychopathological symptoms in patients with CD as complementary to the motor deficit.
Nikolova
Z T
ZT
Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover.|Centre for Systems Neurosciences, Hannover, Germany.
Fellbrich
A
A
Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover.
Born
J
J
Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover.
Dengler
R
R
Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover.|Centre for Systems Neurosciences, Hannover, Germany.
Schröder
C
C
Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover.
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D020821:Dystonic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*