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Spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia

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Abstract

Mental rotation has attracted the interest of cognitive research on dystonia, but at the moment, contrasting data are available on whether this complex cognitive ability is impaired in the disorder. Here, we assessed spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia (CD). Patients with CD and healthy controls were required to perform a letter rotation task (spatial mental rotation) and to judge laterality of front-facing and back-facing human images (egocentric mental rotation). CD patients were selectively impaired on letter rotation, whereas they did not differ from controls when judging laterality of both front-facing and back-facing bodies. These findings support the view according to which neural circuits involved in spatial processing are dysfunctional in CD.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Italia Pagano and Daniela Culiers for their help in collecting the data.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Developmental Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Viale Ellittico 31, 81100, Caserta, Italy

    Massimiliano Conson, Gabriella Santangelo & Rita Impallomeni

  2. Department of Neurosciences, Reproductive Sciences and Odontostomatology, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy

    Francesco Silvestre & Marcello Esposito

  3. Neurology Unit, “Ospedale del Mare”, Naples, Italy

    Silvio Peluso

  4. Clinical Neurophysiology Unit, Cardarelli Hospital, Naples, Italy

    Marcello Esposito

Authors
  1. Massimiliano Conson
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  2. Gabriella Santangelo
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  3. Rita Impallomeni
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  4. Francesco Silvestre
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  5. Silvio Peluso
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  6. Marcello Esposito
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Contributions

MC: conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, project administration, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing; GS: conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, and writing—review and editing; RI: data curation, formal analysis, methodology, and project administration; FS: formal analysis, methodology, and project administration; SP: resources, software, and data curation; ME: conceptualization, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Massimiliano Conson.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standard

The study was approved by the Local Committee and was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration. Informed consent was obtained from all participants after the nature of the study was explained to them.

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Conson, M., Santangelo, G., Impallomeni, R. et al. Spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia. J Neurol 267, 2281–2287 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-020-09839-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-020-09839-8

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