Time will tell: Decision making in premanifest and manifest Huntington’s disease

Abstract Objective To investigate cognitive flexibility in premanifest and manifest Huntington's disease (HD). Background HD is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor, cognitive, and behavioral abnormalities with typical motor symptoms. In this study, we wanted to assess decision making in premanifest (pre‐HD) and manifest HD patients. Methods A total of 77 non‐demented subjects including 29 pre‐HD, 22 manifest HD patients, and 26 healthy controls (HC) were included. We stratified the pre‐HD group based on their estimated years to disease onset into a far (FAR, n = 13) and a near (NEAR, n = 16) group. Furthermore, participants performed the Montreal cognitive assessment battery (MoCA), the trail making task part A and B (TMT A, TMT B), the Symbol digit modalities test (SDMT), and the beads task. Results In the beads task, HD patients gathered less information than all other groups (all p‐values