Aims There is increasing interest in the nature of the emotion recognition deficit in Huntington’s disease (HD) with conflicting reports of disproportionate impairments for some emotions in some modalities. This review aimed to clarify the pattern of emotion recognition deficits in HD. Methods A systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted for studies investigating emotion recognition in Huntington’s disease. Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and PubMed were searched from 1993 to 2010, and citation and reference list searches were also conducted. 1724 citations were identified. Results Sixteen studies met inclusion criteria. In manifest HD recognition of facial anger was found most consistently, although recognition of all negative emotions (facial and vocal) tended to be impaired. In premanifest HD impairments were inconsistent, but are seen in all facial expressions of negative emotion. Inconsistency may represent the variability inherent in HD although may also be due to between-study differences in methodology. Conclusions Current evidence supports the conclusion that recognition of all negative emotions tends to be impaired in HD, particularly in the facial domain. Future work should focus on using more ecologically-valid tests, and testing inter-modality differences
