Symptom awareness and social cognition in Huntington’s disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Symptom awareness and social cognition in Huntington’s disease
IRAS ID
109659
Contact name
Judith Bek
Contact email
Research summary
People with Huntington’s disease (HD) often fail to recognise changes in movement, mood, thinking and behaviour associated with the disease. Poor awareness of early signs has even been found in HD gene carriers who have not yet received a clinical diagnosis. This problem has important implications for quality of life in HD, potentially delaying diagnosis and treatment, affecting medication-taking behaviour, and impacting on lifestyle choices and relationships.
Little is known about how and why people with HD lack awareness of their symptoms. Research on patients with other conditions, such as schizophrenia and dementia, suggests that the problem may be partly explained by difficulties in social cognition – a set of abilities involved in understanding others’ beliefs and feelings. People with neurological conditions sometimes show difficulties in taking different perspectives, and poor self-awareness may reflect a difficulty in evaluating the self from the perspective of others.
HD patients have shown difficulties on tasks that involve explaining and interpreting the behaviour of others (‘theory of mind’) and recognising emotions. This study will examine the relationship between performance on social cognition tasks (theory of mind, emotion recognition) and awareness of changes/symptoms in HD patients and carriers of the HD gene mutation. This should improve our understanding of social cognition and self-awareness problems in HD and help us to detect early signs of change in these abilities prior to diagnosis.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NW/0735
Date of REC Opinion
24 Dec 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion