Functional brain changes underlying irritability in premanifest Huntington’s disease

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Functional brain changes underlying irritability in premanifest Huntington’s disease Jan Van Den Stock1*, François-Laurent De Winter1, Rawaha Ahmad2, Stefan Sunaert2, Koen Van Laere2, Wim Vandenberghe3 and Mathieu Vandenbulcke1 1 KU Leuven, Division of Psychiatry, Department of Neurosciences, Belgium 2 KU Leuven, Department of Imaging and Pathology, Belgium 3 KU Leuven, Department of Neurosciences, Belgium The clinical phenotype of Huntington’s disease consists of motor, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, of which irritability is an important manifestation. Our aim was to identify the functional and structural brain changes that underlie irritability in premanifest Huntington’s disease. Twenty premanifest Huntington’s disease carriers and 20 gene-negative controls from Huntington’s disease families took part in the study. Although the 5 year probability of disease onset was only 11 percent, the premanifest Huntington’s disease group showed striatal atrophy and increased clinical irritability ratings. Functional MRI was performed during a mood induction experiment by means of recollection of emotional (angry, sad, happy) and neutral autobiographical episodes. While there were no significant group differences in the subjective intensity of the emotional experience, the premanifest Huntington’s disease group showed increased anger-selective activation in a distributed network, including the pulvinar, cingulate cortex and somatosensory association cortex, compared to gene-negative controls. Pulvinar activation during anger experience correlated negatively with putaminal grey matter volume and positively with irritability ratings in the premanifest Huntington’s disease group. In addition, the premanifest Huntington’s disease group showed a decrease in anger-selective activation in the amygdala, which correlated with putaminal and caudate grey matter volume. In conclusion, compared to gene-negative controls, anger experience in premanifest Huntington’s disease is associated with activity changes in a distributed set of regions known to be involved in emotion regulation. Increased activity is related to behavioral and volumetric measures, providing insight in the pathophysiology of early neuropsychiatric symptoms in premanifest Huntington’s disease. References Van den Stock, J., De Winter, F. L., Ahmad, R., Sunaert, S., Van Laere, K., Vandenberghe, W., & Vandenbulcke, M. (2015). Functional brain changes underlying irritability in premanifest Huntington's disease. Hum Brain Mapp. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22799 Keywords: Pulvinar, Gyrus Cinguli, Amygdala, Emotions, Affective Symptoms, Aggression Conference: 11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience, Mons, Belgium, 22 May - 22 May, 2015. Presentation Type: Oral or Poster presentation Topic: Neuroscience Citation: Van Den Stock J, De Winter F, Ahmad R, Sunaert S, Van Laere K, Vandenberghe W and Vandenbulcke M (2015). Functional brain changes underlying irritability in premanifest Huntington’s disease. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2015.89.00054 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 29 Apr 2015; Published Online: 05 May 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Jan Van Den Stock, KU Leuven, Division of Psychiatry, Department of Neurosciences, Leuven, Belgium, jan.vandenstock@med.kuleuven.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Jan Van Den Stock François-Laurent De Winter Rawaha Ahmad Stefan Sunaert Koen Van Laere Wim Vandenberghe Mathieu Vandenbulcke Google Jan Van Den Stock François-Laurent De Winter Rawaha Ahmad Stefan Sunaert Koen Van Laere Wim Vandenberghe Mathieu Vandenbulcke Google Scholar Jan Van Den Stock François-Laurent De Winter Rawaha Ahmad Stefan Sunaert Koen Van Laere Wim Vandenberghe Mathieu Vandenbulcke PubMed Jan Van Den Stock François-Laurent De Winter Rawaha Ahmad Stefan Sunaert Koen Van Laere Wim Vandenberghe Mathieu Vandenbulcke Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.