title: The neuropsychology of first impressions: Evidence from Huntington's disease.
abstract: Impairments of emotion recognition have been widely documented in Huntington's disease (HD), but little is known concerning how these relate to other aspects of social cognition, including first impressions of traits such as trustworthiness and dominance. Here, we introduce a novel and sensitive method to investigate the ability to evaluate trustworthiness and dominance from facial appearance, with control tasks measuring ability to perceive differences between comparable stimuli. We used this new method together with standard tests of face perception to investigate social cognition in HD. We found that a subgroup of people with HD was impaired at perceiving trustworthiness and dominance, and that perceiving trustworthiness and dominance were correlated with impaired facial expression recognition. In addition, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to provisionally identify candidate brain regions associated with social cognition by contrasting regional functional anisotropy (FA) measures between subgroups of HD participants showing normal or impaired perception of trustworthiness and dominance, and by correlating these regional brain abnormalities with behavioural performance on tests of emotion recognition. In this way we show for the first time alterations in perception of trustworthiness and dominance in people with HD and link these to regions which may map the boundaries of the social brain. The pattern of breakdown seen in this neurodegenerative disease can thus be used to explore potential inter-relationships between different components of social cognition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany; School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK. Electronic address: rhs3@st-and.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Reiner
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sprengelmeyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, York, England, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Young
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Eva-Maria
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Baldas
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Iris
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ratheiser
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, York, England, UK; School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Clare A M
authors.initials: CAM
authors.lastname: Sutherland
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans-Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Grön
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Sigurd D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Süssmuth
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: G Bernhard
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Landwehrmeyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Orth
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging / Q000379:methods; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009484:Neuropsychology / Q000379:methods; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: DTI; Dominance; Emotion recognition; Face perception; Huntington's disease; Trustworthiness