TY - JOUR
T1 - The neuropsychology of first impressions
T2 - Evidence from Huntington's disease
AU - Sprengelmeyer, Reiner
AU - Young, Andrew W.
AU - Baldas, Eva-Maria
AU - Ratheiser, Iris
AU - Sutherland, Clare AM
AU - Müller, Hans-Peter
AU - Grön, Georg
AU - Süssmuth, Sigurd D
AU - Landwehrmeyer, G Bernhard
AU - Orth, Michael
PY - 2016/12
Y1 - 2016/12
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Huntington's disease
KW - trustworthiness
KW - dominance
KW - face perception
KW - emotion recognition
KW - DTI
UR - http://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-neuropsychology-of-first-impressions-evidence-from-huntingtons-disease(9c4991ce-ed37-4b51-8725-b778bf76a21a).html
UR - http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/107340/
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.10.006
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.10.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 27852003
SN - 0010-9452
VL - 85
SP - 100
EP - 115
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
ER -