THE surprising discovery that the deadly neurological disease Huntington’s improves ability at some cognitive tests is helping us to understand the illness.
from the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors in Dortmund, Germany, and his colleagues asked 13 people with Huntington’s and 25 apparently healthy controls, half of whom had a gene for Huntington’s but no symptoms, to judge whether tones played in a series were long or short. Huntington’s worsens ability at most cognitive tests, but in this one the people with Huntington’s performed better: they had an average reaction time of 0.5…
