Your misery is no longer my pleasure: Reduced schadenfreude in Huntington's disease families

Abstract

Schadenfreude - pleasure at others' misfortunes - has been systematically related to ventral striatum activity. This brain region is affected early in individuals with manifest and pre-manifest Huntington's disease (HD). However, the experience of schadenfreude has not yet been investigated in HD. In this study, 21 manifest HD patients, 19 first-degree asymptomatic relatives, and 23 healthy controls performed an experimental task designed to trigger schadenfreude, envy (another social emotion acting as an affective control condition), and control situations. Both HD patients and first-degree relatives experienced lower schadenfreude in response to others' misfortunes, with no group differences in ratings of envy and control conditions. These results offer unprecedented evidence of a highly specific impairment in reward processing, extending previous reports in manifest and pre-manifest HD individuals. Moreover, these findings suggest that early striatal impairments may be related to reduced feelings of schadenfreude. In sum, our work contributes to the understanding of emotional impairments in early stages of HD, while shedding light on their neural correlates.

Corticostriatal signatures of schadenfreude: evidence from Huntington’s disease

“…We replicated the findings of a recent behavioural study10 showing lower schadenfreude in this population. This effect was present even after controlling for cognitive impairment/executive dysfunction.…”

“…These samples of patients and controls are different from those assessed in our previous behavioural study 10. Patients with HD underwent a neurological examination and were assessed using the Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS)19 motor examination section and the Physical Disability Rating Scale (PDRS)20 (table 1).…”

“…Levels of envy and schadenfreude were measured through a task previously employed in this population 10. Before testing, each participant was shown a real-life photograph and a description of two target characters matched in age and gender with the participant—relevant data were obtained in a brief initial interview.…”

“…Finally, atrophy extends to the entorhinal cortex and cortical regions subserving high-order functions 3–5. Specifically, structural and functional abnormalities in the basal ganglia and frontostriatal pathways have been associated with behavioural changes7 and impairments in several social cognition domains, including emotion recognition,8 mentalising abilities9 and social emotions 10…”

“…In a recent behavioural study,10 we evaluated patients with HD and asymptomatic first-degree relatives with a novel paradigm assessing schadenfreude and envy (another social emotion acting as a control condition). Schadenfreude was selectively reduced in both groups relative to controls, with no abnormalities in control conditions (ie, ratings of envy or ratings for neutral conditions).…”