Unawareness of deficits in Huntington's disease

Abstract

Several new techniques were developed to assess quantitatively the degree to which patients with Huntington's disease (HD) are aware of their deficits, to evaluate the relation between cognitive impairment and unawareness of deficits, and to determine whether patients exhibit differential awareness of their motor disturbance and cognitive deficits. Results of a questionnaire measure indicated that HD patients rated their own difficulties with motor and cognitive activities of daily life significantly lower than relatives rated patients' problems, and this discrepancy was related to patients' level of cognitive impairment. In contrast, patients were reasonably accurate when predicting their performance on specific motor and cognitive tasks when compared to both their actual performance and relatives' predictions. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed, and the role of frontal lobe dysfunction in the awareness problems characterizing dementia is considered.