title: Time perception impairment in early-to-moderate stages of Huntington's disease is related to memory deficits.
abstract: Huntington's disease (HD) primarily affects striatum and prefrontal dopaminergic circuits which are fundamental neural correlates of the timekeeping mechanism. The few studies on HD mainly investigated motor timing performance in second durations. The present work explored time perception in early-to-moderate symptomatic HD patients for seconds and milliseconds with the aim to clarify which component of the scalar expectancy theory (SET) is mainly responsible for HD timing defect. Eleven HD patients were compared to 11 controls employing two separate temporal bisection tasks in second and millisecond ranges. Our results revealed the same time perception deficits for seconds and milliseconds in HD patients. Time perception impairment in early-to-moderate stages of Huntington's disease is related to memory deficits. Furthermore, both the non-systematical defect of temporal sensitivity and the main impairment of timing performance in the extreme value of the psychophysical curves suggested an HD deficit in the memory component of the SET. This result was further confirmed by the significant correlations between time perception performance and long-term memory test scores. Our findings added important preliminary data for both a deeper comprehension of HD time-keeping deficits and possible implications on neuro-rehabilitation practices.
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, Pad. 26, 50100, Florence, Italy. srighi@unifi.it.
authors: Stefania
authors: S
authors: Righi
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, Pad. 26, 50100, Florence, Italy.
authors: Luca
authors: L
authors: Galli
authors: II Neurological Unit, Careggi University Hospital, Florence, Italy.
authors: Marco
authors: M
authors: Paganini
authors: II Neurological Unit, Careggi University Hospital, Florence, Italy.
authors: Elisabetta
authors: E
authors: Bertini
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, Pad. 26, 50100, Florence, Italy.
authors: Maria Pia
authors: MP
authors: Viggiano
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, Pad. 26, 50100, Florence, Italy.
authors: Silvia
authors: S
authors: Piacentini
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011601:Psychophysics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013998:Time Perception
keywords: Episodic memory; Huntington’s disease; Temporal bisection-task; Time perception