Social Decision-Making in Huntington’s Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Social decision-making and cognitive abilities in pre-manifest and manifest Huntington’s disease
IRAS ID
294256
Contact name
Roger Barker
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Fundation Trust and The University of Cambridge
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Hundreds of decisions must be made daily, meaning that decision-making is an essential skill for everyday life and independence. It is a complex mental process relying on numerous cognitive functions. Impaired decision-making has been associated with several neurodegenerative diseases, affecting patients’ independence and quality of life.
Huntington’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by marked progressive cognitive deficits including attention, episodic memory, working memory, psychomotor speed, verbal fluency, and executive functions. Based on this cognitive phenotype a functional deficit in decision-making seems likely and has been reported anecdotally. However, laboratory-based studies have not been able to reliably capture this functional impairment. These studies have primarily focused on decision-making in isolation of any social influence, excluding a factor that greatly impacts most decision-making in real life. Further, cognitive processes unique to social interactions appear to be affected early in HD. It is however unclear whether these changes relate to functional impairment in decision-making.
The current study aims to assess social decision-making in pre-manifest HD gene carriers and manifest HD patients, as this might be a more ecologically valid approach to measure decision-making processes in HD. This will further be related to assessments of more low-level cognitive function relevant to social decision-making and HD, to gain a better understanding of the underlying factors driving this deficit. These will include assessments of social cognition, executive functions, information processing, and reward/risk processing. This study will provide insight into changes in social decision-making processes and underlying cognitive functions in HD.REC name
HSC REC B
REC reference
21/NI/0134
Date of REC Opinion
17 Aug 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion