Deficits in voice and multisensory processing in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome

Publication date: Available online 16 March 2016 Source:Neuropsychologia Author(s): Juliette Salles, Kuzma Strelnikov, Mantoulan Carine, Thuilleaux Denise, Virginie Laurier, Catherine Molinas, Maïthé Tauber, Pascal Barone Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a rare neurodevelopmental and genetic disorder that is characterized by various expression of endocrine, cognitive and behavioral problems, among which a true obsession for food and a deficit of satiety that leads to hyperphagia and severe obesity. Neuropsychological studies have reported that PWS display altered social interactions with a specific weakness in interpreting social information and in responding to them, a symptom closed to that observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Based on the hypothesis that atypical multisensory integration such as face and voice interactions would contribute in PWS to social impairment we investigate the abilities of PWS to process communication signals including the human voice. Patients with PWS recruited from the national reference center for PWS performed a simple detection task of stimuli presented in an uni-o or bimodal condition, as well as a voice discrimination task. Compared to control typically developing (TD) individuals, PWS present a specific deficit in discriminating human voices from environmental sounds. Further, PWS present a much lower multisensory benefits with an absence of violation of the race model indicating that multisensory information d...
Source: Neuropsychologia - Category: Neurology Source Type: research