Altered subjective fear responses in Huntington's disease.

Parkinsonism Relat Disord

Department of Neuropsychiatry, The Barberry National Centre for Mental Health, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, 25 Vincent Drive, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2FG, UK.

Published: June 2011

Patients with Huntington's disease (HD) have been shown to exhibit impairment in the recognition of facial expressions such as disgust, as well as deficits in disgust responses to olfactory and gustatory stimuli. The present study investigated whether HD is associated with changes in emotional responses to a variety of visual and verbal stimuli selected to elicit core disgust, moral disgust, fear and happiness. Thirteen patients with HD and twelve controls provided emotional ratings after both reading emotion eliciting scenarios and viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System database. Patients with HD exhibited executive dysfunction. In comparison to controls, they gave similar ratings for happy stimuli and did not differ significantly in response to core disgust or moral disgust stimuli. However, they did exhibit lower fear ratings in response to both sets of fear stimuli (pictures and scenarios), and higher anger ratings than controls in response to fear pictures. These differences in fear response could reflect dysfunction within frontostriatal pathways involving the amygdala. Changes to fear responses in HD may impair decision making and lead to increased risk-taking behaviour with significant personal or social consequences.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.parkreldis.2011.01.020DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

fear responses
8
huntington's disease
8
core disgust
8
disgust moral
8
moral disgust
8
fear
7
disgust
6
stimuli
5
altered subjective
4
subjective fear
4

Similar Publications

Purpose: The primary purpose of the study was to explore the impact of health workers' awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) on their workplace well-being, addressing a critical gap in the literature. By examining this relationship through the lens of the Job demands-resources (JD-R) model, the study aimed to provide insights into how health workers' perceptions of AI integration in their jobs and careers could influence their informal learning behaviour and, consequently, their overall well-being in the workplace. The study's findings could inform strategies for supporting healthcare workers during technological transformations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Predicting the spatial and temporal responses of species exhibiting intraguild predation (IGP) relationships is difficult due to variation in potential interactions and environmental context. Eurasian badgers () are intraguild predators of European hedgehogs () and are implicated in their population decline via both direct predation and competition for shared food resources. Previous studies have shown spatial separation between these species and attributed this to hedgehogs experiencing a 'landscape of fear', but little is known about the potential role of differential habitat use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Experimental observations and field data demonstrated that predators adapt their hunting strategies in response to prey abundance. While previous studies explored the impact of predation risk on predator-prey interactions, the impact of symbiotic relationships between fear-affected prey and non-prey species on system dynamics remains unexplored. This study uses a mathematical approach to investigate how different symbiotic relationships govern system dynamics when predators adapt to prey availability.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Generalized learning is a fundamental process observed across species, contexts, and sensory modalities that enables animals to use past experiences to adapt to changing conditions. Evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) extracts general features of an experience that can be used across multiple situations. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region of the PFC, is implicated in generalized fear responses to novel contexts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Glucocorticoids increase fear extinction in preclinical and human studies. Endogenous cortisol might influence who will benefit from exposure therapy in anxiety-spectrum disorders.

Methods: To investigate the impact of cortisol levels on within-session habituation of distress - a measure of success of exposure therapy - in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) fifty-one OCD patients were studied during their stressful first cognitive-behavioral exposure therapy session with response prevention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!