title: Impairments in negative emotion recognition and empathy for pain in Huntington's disease families.
abstract: Lack of empathy and emotional disturbances are prominent clinical features of Huntington's disease (HD). While emotion recognition impairments in HD patients are well established, there are no experimental designs assessing empathy in this population. The present study seeks to cover such a gap in the literature. Eighteen manifest HD patients, 19 first-degree asymptomatic relatives, and 36 healthy control participants completed two emotion-recognition tasks with different levels of contextual dependence. They were also evaluated with an empathy-for-pain task tapping the perception of intentional and accidental harm. Moreover, we explored potential associations among empathy, emotion recognition, and other relevant factors - e.g., executive functions (EF). The results showed that both HD patients and asymptomatic relatives are impaired in the recognition of negative emotions from isolated faces. However, their performance in emotion recognition was normal in the presence of contextual cues. HD patients also showed subtle empathy impairments. There were no significant correlations between EF, empathy, and emotion recognition measures in either HD patients or relatives. In controls, EF was positively correlated with emotion recognition. Furthermore, emotion recognition was positively correlated with the performance in the empathy task. Our findings highlight the preserved cognitive abilities in HD families when using more ecological tasks displaying emotional expressions in the context in which they typically appear. Moreover, our results suggest that emotion recognition impairments may constitute a potential biomarker of HD onset and progression. These results contribute to the understanding of emotion recognition and empathy deficits observed in HD and have important theoretical and clinical implications.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Institute of Neuroscience, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile. Electronic address: sbaez@ineco.org.ar.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baez
authors.affiliation: National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia. Electronic address: eduarpsy@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Eduar
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Herrera
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Institute of Neuroscience, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. Electronic address: gersha@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Oscar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gershanik
authors.affiliation: National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), Córdoba, Argentina. Electronic address: adolfomartingarcia@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Adolfo M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Medellín, Colombia; Grupo de Neurociencias de Antioquia, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. Electronic address: yamilebocanegra@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Yamile
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bocanegra
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Institute of Neuroscience, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile. Electronic address: kargwoman@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Lucila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kargieman
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Institute of Neuroscience, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile; Australian Research Council (ACR) Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australia. Electronic address: fmanes@ineco.org.ar.
authors.forename: Facundo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Manes
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Institute of Neuroscience, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina; UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile; Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia; Australian Research Council (ACR) Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australia. Electronic address: aibanez@ineco.org.ar.
authors.forename: Agustin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ibanez
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009679:Nuclear Family; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology
keywords: Contextual processing; Emotion recognition; Empathy; First-degree asymptomatic relatives; Huntington's disease