Reorientation of attention in Huntington disease.

Full Abstract

OBJECTIVES

AND BACKGROUND:
This experiment sought to quantify the extent to which patients with Huntington disease (HD) have difficulties in orienting attention, via a vibrotactile version of a Posner-type cost-benefit paradigm.

METHOD:
Participants were required to push a button in response to a vibration delivered to the index finger of either hand. Prior to each stimulus vibration, a precue (valid, neutral, or invalid) was delivered to the finger. Benefits and costs were calculated from valid and invalid precues.

RESULTS:
Although patients with HD were overall slower than the controls, their performance was no different; both patients and controls demonstrated increased benefits from valid compared with invalid and neutral cues. Of interest was the finding that patients, unlike controls, performed significantly slower with the cue presented to the left compared with the right side. The crossed arm configuration proved to be too difficult for the patients with HD, and thus an analysis on these data was not permitted.

CONCLUSIONS:
Patients may experience difficulties in allocating attentional resources toward their left nonpreferred hand. Overall, findings demonstrate that patients with HD, with minimal caudate damage at early stages of disease onset, may not experience problems in their ability to orient attention.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Georgiou-Karistianis, Nellie (N); Churchyard, Andrew (A); Chiu, Edmond (E); Bradshaw, John L (JL);

Affiliation: Psychology Department, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. nellie.georgiou@med.monash.edu.au

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Controlled Clinical Trial; Journal Article

Journal: Neuropsychiatry, neuropsychology, and behavioral neurology (Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychol Behav Neurol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Dec; vol 15 (issue 4) : pp 225-31

Dates: Created 2002/12/04; Completed 2003/03/17; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12464749, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Analysis of Variance
Attention
Cues
Female
Fingers
Functional Laterality
Humans
Huntington Disease - physiopathology

This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.

See 100+ related articles.