Affiliations: [a]
School of Medicine, College of Life Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
| [b]
Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, College of Life Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
Correspondence:
[*]
Correspondence to: Claire V. Hutchinson, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, College of Life Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK. Tel.: +44 0 116 2297183; E-mail: ch190@le.ac.uk.
Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract: It is well-documented that patients with Huntington’s disease (HD) exhibit specific deficits in visual cognition. A less well-documented literature also exists that suggests people with HD experience a number of disease-related changes to more rudimentary sensory visual processing. Here, we review evidence for the effects of HD on the integrity of the early visual pathways in humans along with changes to low-level visual sensitivity. We find evidence for reduced structural and functional integrity of the visual pathways, marked by retinal thinning, reduced VEP amplitude, and cell loss and thinning in visual cortex. We also find evidence of visual perceptual deficits, particularly for colour and motion. We suggest that future studies with well-defined HD and HD-related groups in appropriate numbers that systematically examine the relationship between structural changes to the visual system, basic visual perceptual deficits and disease stage/severity are therefore likely to yield promising results.
