title: Social cognition in Huntington's disease: A meta-analysis.
abstract: Neurocognitive impairment in Huntington's disease (HD) frequently includes deficits in emotion recognition, and recent studies have also provided evidence for deficits in theory of mind (ToM). There have been conflicting reports regarding the extent of emotion recognition and ToM deficits before the onset of motor symptoms in HD. In this meta-analysis, ToM and emotion recognition performances of 2226HD or pre-manifest HD and 998 healthy controls were included in the meta-analysis. Meta-regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between social cognition deficits and demographic, cognitive and clinical features in HD. HD patients were significantly less accurate than controls in ToM and across all emotions in response to both facial and vocal stimuli. ToM (d=1.72) and recognition of negative emotions (d=1.20-1.33), especially anger, disgust and fear (d=1.26-1.52) were severely impaired. Pre-manifest HD was also associated with impairment in social cognition. The severity of emotion recognition impairment was significantly associated with disease burden, proximity of onset of motor symptoms and cognitive impairment. Social cognition impairments are potential biomarkers of disease onset and progression in HD.
authors.affiliation: Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria 3053, Australia. Electronic address: emrebora@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Emre
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bora
authors.affiliation: Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria 3053, Australia.
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Velakoulis
authors.affiliation: Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Carlton South, Victoria 3053, Australia.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walterfang
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: Emotion recognition; Huntington’s disease; Social cognition; Theory of mind