Objective: To assess social cognition in people with cervical dystonia (CD).

Background: Anxiety and depression are common and disabling comorbidities in CD. Difficulties in processing socially salient stimuli may affect mood control, but have not been thoroughly investigated in CD.

Method: We report preliminary cross-sectional data in which 36 patients (86.1% female, mean age=55.56 years) were administered 9 tests for social cognition domains (theory of mind – reality-known/unknown; empathy; social perception – affect naming, prosody pair matching, and social perception; and social behaviour – social norms questionnaire) in addition to assessments of dystonia (Toronto Western Spasmodic Torticollis Rating Scale) and mood/anxiety (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Panic Disorder Severity Scale, and Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale). Social cognition tasks were standardized using published normative data and cut off of z < -1.5 for impairment. Relationships between clinical scores were examined using bivariate correlation. Social cognition abilities were compared between CD patients with high/low (based on HADS cut-off=8) anxiety and depression, using Mann-Whitney U.

Results: CD severity did not significantly correlate with any social cognition domain. Significant direct correlations were observed between: HADS Anxiety score and affect naming (r=.418) and social perception (r=.385); LSAS score and reality-unknown (r=.399); PDSS composite score and affect naming (r=.424) and social perception (r=.350); Y-BOCS Obsessions score and affect naming (r=.500) and social perception (r=.385). HADS Depression was significantly inversely correlated with empathy quotient (r=-.345). Participants with CD and clinically relevant anxiety (n=16) performed marginally better on tasks of affect naming (U=100.50 p=.056) than those without anxiety (n=20). Participants with CD and clinically relevant depression (n=10) performed moderately worse on the empathy quotient (U=89.00 p=.095) than those without depression (n=26). 56% fell below the norm in the social norms questionnaire, 17% for the empathy quotient, and 3% for affect naming.

Conclusion: Social cognition performance does not correlate with CD severity, but appears enhanced in anxious CD patients, whereas empathy worsens at the worsening of depression. Social cognition mechanisms could facilitate coping with raised anxiety in people with CD.

« Back to 2019 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/social-cognition-and-habituation-in-cervical-dystonia/