Decision-making impairments in patients with Wilson's disease

Abstract

Wilson's disease (WD) causes deposition of copper, mainly in the basal ganglia. One consequence of deposition seems to be impairment of executive functions, which could cause problems in decision making. In 30 WD patients and 30 healthy controls (HCs), we examined decision making under risk in the Game of Dice Task, and we assessed working memory and executive functions. WD patients exhibited a greater preference for disadvantageous choices than did HCs. Reduced decision-making performance was closely correlated to lower executive functions. Decision-making deficits of WD might be associated with frontostriatal loops, which are involved in executive functions and feedback processing.

Keywords:

• Wilson's disease
• Decision making
• Game of Dice Task
• Executive function
• Feedback processing

Notes

Huijuan Ma and Xinyi Lv contributed equally to this work.

We are deeply indebted to Matthias Brand for providing the Game of Dice Task. We wish to thank the doctors and patients in the Chinese Treatment Center of Wilson's Disease for their supportive work in data collection. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 81171273 and 31000503) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant 2011707805).