Does Facial Amimia Impact the Recognition of Facial Emotions? An EMG Study in Parkinson's Disease (original) (raw)
Related papers
Parkinson's Disease, 2018
Difficulty with emotion recognition is increasingly being recognized as a symptom of Parkinson’s disease. Most research into this area contends that progressive cognitive decline accompanying the disease is to be blamed. However, facial mimicry (i.e., the involuntary congruent activation of facial expression muscles upon viewing a particular facial expression) might also play a role and has been relatively understudied in this clinical population. In healthy participants, facial mimicry has been shown to improve recognition of observed emotions, a phenomenon described by embodied simulation theory. Due to motor disturbances, Parkinson’s disease patients frequently show reduced emotional expressiveness, which translates into reduced mimicry. Therefore, it is likely that facial mimicry problems in Parkinson’s disease contribute at least partly to the emotional recognition deficits that these patients experience and might greatly influence their social cognition abilities and quality o...
Deficits in the Mimicry of Facial Expressions in Parkinson's Disease
Background: Humans spontaneously mimic the facial expressions of others, facilitating social interaction. This mimicking behavior may be impaired in individuals with Parkinson's disease, for whom the loss of facial movements is a clinical feature. Objective: To assess the presence of facial mimicry in patients with Parkinson's disease. Method: Twenty-seven non-depressed patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and 28 age-matched controls had their facial muscles recorded with electromyography while they observed presentations of calm, happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotions. Results: Patients exhibited reduced amplitude and delayed onset in the zygomaticus major muscle region (smiling response) following happy presentations (patients M = 0.02, 95% confidence interval [CI] −0.15 to 0.18, controls M = 0.26, CI 0.14 to 0.37, ANOVA, effect size [ES] = 0.18, p < 0.001). Although patients exhibited activation of the corrugator supercilii and medial frontalis (frowning response) following sad and fearful presentations, the frontalis response to sad presentations was attenuated relative to controls (patients M = 0.05, CI −0.08 to 0.18, controls M = 0.21, CI 0.09 to 0.34, ANOVA, ES = 0.07, p = 0.017). The amplitude of patients' zygomaticus activity in response to positive emotions was found to be negatively correlated with response times for ratings of emotional identification, suggesting a motor-behavioral link (r = –0.45, p = 0.02, two-tailed). Conclusions: Patients showed decreased mimicry overall, mimicking other peoples' frowns to some extent, but presenting with profoundly weakened and delayed smiles. These findings open a new avenue of inquiry into the “masked face” syndrome of PD.
Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Parkinson’s Disease: An Emotional Mirror Mechanism?
PLOS ONE, 2017
Background and aim Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have impairment of facial expressivity (hypomimia) and difficulties in interpreting the emotional facial expressions produced by others, especially for aversive emotions. We aimed to evaluate the ability to produce facial emotional expressions and to recognize facial emotional expressions produced by others in a group of PD patients and a group of healthy participants in order to explore the relationship between these two abilities and any differences between the two groups of participants. Methods Twenty non-demented, non-depressed PD patients and twenty healthy participants (HC) matched for demographic characteristics were studied. The ability of recognizing emotional facial expressions was assessed with the Ekman 60-faces test (Emotion recognition task). Participants were video-recorded while posing facial expressions of 6 primary emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and anger). The most expressive pictures for each emotion were derived from the videos. Ten healthy raters were asked to look at the pictures displayed on a computer-screen in pseudo-random fashion and to identify the emotional label in a six-forced-choice response format (Emotion expressivity task). Reaction time (RT) and accuracy of responses were recorded. At the end of each trial the participant was asked to rate his/her confidence in his/her perceived accuracy of response.
Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease
A BST RACT : Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder classically characterized by motor symptoms. Among them, hypomimia affects facial expressiveness and social communication and has a highly negative impact on patients' and relatives' quality of life. Patients also frequently experience nonmotor symptoms, including emotional-processing impairments, leading to difficulty in recognizing emotions from faces. Aside from its theoretical importance, understanding the disruption of facial emotion recognition in PD is crucial for improving quality of life for both patients and caregivers, as this impairment is associated with heightened interpersonal difficulties. However, studies assessing abilities in recognizing facial emotions in PD still report contradictory outcomes. The origins of this inconsistency are unclear, and several questions (regarding the role of dopamine replacement therapy or the possible consequences of hypomimia) remain unanswered. We therefore undertook a fresh review of relevant articles focusing on facial emotion recognition in PD to deepen current understanding of this nonmotor feature, exploring multiple significant potential confounding factors, both clinical and methodological, and discussing probable pathophysiological mechanisms. This led us to examine recent proposals about the role of basal ganglia-based circuits in emotion and to consider the involvement of facial mimicry in this deficit from the perspective of embodied simulation theory. We believe our findings will inform clinical practice and increase fundamental knowledge, particularly in relation to potential embodied emotion impairment in PD.
Frontiers in Psychology
Facial mimicry (FM) is an automatic response to imitate the facial expressions of others. However, neural correlates of the phenomenon are as yet not well established. We investigated this issue using simultaneously recorded EMG and BOLD signals during perception of dynamic and static emotional facial expressions of happiness and anger. During display presentations, BOLD signals and zygomaticus major (ZM), corrugator supercilii (CS) and orbicularis oculi (OO) EMG responses were recorded simultaneously from 46 healthy individuals. Subjects reacted spontaneously to happy facial expressions with increased EMG activity in ZM and OO muscles and decreased CS activity, which was interpreted as FM. Facial muscle responses correlated with BOLD activity in regions associated with motor simulation of facial expressions [i.e., inferior frontal gyrus, a classical Mirror Neuron System (MNS)]. Further, we also found correlations for regions associated with emotional processing (i.e., insula, part of the extended MNS). It is concluded that FM involves both motor and emotional brain structures, especially during perception of natural emotional expressions.
Mapping correspondence between facial mimicry and emotion recognition in healthy subjects
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2012
We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions.
Facial EMG Responses to Emotional Expressions Are Related to Emotion Perception Ability
PLoS ONE, 2014
Although most people can identify facial expressions of emotions well, they still differ in this ability. According to embodied simulation theories understanding emotions of others is fostered by involuntarily mimicking the perceived expressions, causing a ''reactivation'' of the corresponding mental state. Some studies suggest automatic facial mimicry during expression viewing; however, findings on the relationship between mimicry and emotion perception abilities are equivocal. The present study investigated individual differences in emotion perception and its relationship to facial muscle responsesrecorded with electromyogram (EMG)-in response to emotional facial expressions. Nu = u269 participants completed multiple tasks measuring face and emotion perception. EMG recordings were taken from a subsample (Nu = u110) in an independent emotion classification task of short videos displaying six emotions. Confirmatory factor analyses of the m. corrugator supercilii in response to angry, happy, sad, and neutral expressions showed that individual differences in corrugator activity can be separated into a general response to all faces and an emotion-related response. Structural equation modeling revealed a substantial relationship between the emotion-related response and emotion perception ability, providing evidence for the role of facial muscle activation in emotion perception from an individual differences perspective.
Reduced facial expressiveness in Parkinson’s disease: A pure motor disorder?
Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 2015
Background and aims: Impaired emotional facial expressiveness is an important feature in Parkinson's disease (PD). Although there is evidence of a possible relationship between reduced facial expressiveness and altered emotion recognition or imagery in PD, it is unknown whether other aspects of the emotional processing, such as subjective emotional experience (alexithymia), might influence hypomimia in this condition. In this study wee aimed to investigate possible relationship between reduced facial expressiveness and altered emotion processing (including facial recognition and alexithymia) in patients with PD. Methods: Forty PD patients and seventeen healthy controls were evaluated. Facial expressiveness was rated on video recordings, according to the UPDRS-III item 19 and using an ad hoc scale assessing static and dynamic facial expression and posed emotions. Six blind raters evaluated the patients' videos. Emotion facial recognition was tested using the Ekman Test; alexithymia was assessed using Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results: PD patients had a significantly reduced static and dynamic facial expressiveness and a deficit in posing happiness and surprise. They performed significantly worse than healthy controls in recognizing surprise (p = 0.03). The Ekman total score positively correlated with the global expressiveness (R^2 = 0.39, p = 0.01) and with the expressiveness of disgust (R^2 = 0.32, p = 0.01). The occurrence of alexithymia was not different between PD patients and HC; however, a significant negative correlation between the expressiveness of disgust was found for a subscore of TAS (R^2 = −.447, p = 0.007). Conclusions: Reduced facial expressiveness in PD may be in part related to difficulties with emotional recognition in a context of an unimpaired subjective emotional experience.
Frontiers in Neurology, 2016
Background: Altered emotional processing, including reduced emotion facial expression and defective emotion recognition, has been reported in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, few studies have objectively investigated facial expression abnormalities in PD using neurophysiological techniques. It is not known whether altered facial expression and recognition in PD are related. Objective: To investigate possible deficits in facial emotion expression and emotion recognition and their relationship, if any, in patients with PD. Methods: Eighteen patients with PD and 16 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Facial expressions of emotion were recorded using a 3D optoelectronic system and analyzed using the facial action coding system. Possible deficits in emotion recognition were assessed using the Ekman test. Participants were assessed in one experimental session. Possible relationship between the kinematic variables of facial emotion expression, the Ekman test scores, and clinical and demographic data in patients were evaluated using the Spearman's test and multiple regression analysis. results: The facial expression of all six basic emotions had slower velocity and lower amplitude in patients in comparison to healthy controls (all Ps < 0.05). Patients also yielded worse Ekman global score and disgust, sadness, and fear sub-scores than healthy controls (all Ps < 0.001). Altered facial expression kinematics and emotion recognition deficits were unrelated in patients (all Ps > 0.05). Finally, no relationship emerged between kinematic variables of facial emotion expression, the Ekman test scores, and clinical and demographic data in patients (all Ps > 0.05). conclusion: The results in this study provide further evidence of altered emotional processing in PD. The lack of any correlation between altered facial emotion expression kinematics and emotion recognition deficits in patients suggests that these abnormalities are mediated by separate pathophysiological mechanisms.