Affective speech processing in patients with primary cervical dystonia

Primary cervical dystonia as a basal ganglia disorder mainly presents with dysfunction of the motor system. Up to now, insufficient research is carried out regarding the co-existence of eventual non-motor deficits. Recent studies (Rinnerthaler M. et al. 2006) have revealed that individuals with primary focal dystonia demonstrate impairment in recognizing emotional cues from facial expressions, indicating an alteration of emotional processing. The objective of our study was to find out if patients with primary focal dystonia have disturbances in affective speech perception. Moreover, we were interested in whether…