Altered Kinematics of Facial Emotion Expression and Emotion Recognition Deficits Are Unrelated in Parkinson’s Disease (original) (raw)

Emotional Processing abilities in individuals with PD

Accurately recognizing the emotional states of others is crucial for successful social interactions and social relationships. Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) have shown deficits in emotional recognition abilities although findings have been inconsistent. This study examined recognition of emotions from prosody and from facial emotional expressions with three levels of subtlety, in 30 individuals with PD (without dementia) and 30 control participants. The PD group were impaired on the prosody task, with no differential impairments in specific emotions. PD participants were also impaired at recognizing facial expressions of emotion, with a significant association between how well they could recognize emotions in the two modalities, even after controlling for disease severity. When recognizing facial expressions, the PD group had no difficulty identifying prototypical Ekman and Friesen (1976) emotional faces, but were poorer than controls at recognizing the moderate and difficult levels of subtle expressions. They were differentially impaired at recognizing moderately subtle expressions of disgust and sad expressions at the difficult level. Notably, however, they were impaired at recognizing happy expressions at both levels of subtlety. Furthermore how well PD participants identified happy expressions conveyed by either face or voice was strongly related to accuracy in the other modality. This suggests dysfunction of overlapping components of the circuitry processing happy expressions in PD. This study demonstrates the usefulness of including subtle expressions of emotion, likely to be encountered in everyday life, when assessing recognition of facial expressions.

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.

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.

Emotional facedness in Parkinson's disease

Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996), 2018

People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have a deficit of facial expression. Previous studies indicate that hemispheric dominance for emotional processing can give rise to an asymmetric pattern of facial expression of emotion. In this study, we aimed to evaluate possible asymmetry in facial emotion expressivity in PD. Twenty PD patients and twenty healthy controls were video-recorded while posing the 6 basic emotions. The most expressive pictures were derived from the videos and chimeric faces were created. Nine healthy raters were asked to judge which of the two chimeras looked more expressive. Chosen responses, reaction times and confidence levels were the main outcome measures. We evaluated possible differences in these measures within each group and between groups (PD, healthy controls). We assessed possible correlations between a global facial laterality index (pooling all emotions together) as well as facial laterality indexes for each emotion and the body laterality index, a...

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 expressivity in patients with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease

Journal of Neural Transmission

Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are neurodegenerative disorders with some overlapping clinical features. Hypomimia (reduced facial expressivity) is a prominent sign of PD and it is also present in AD. However, no study has experimentally assessed hypomimia in AD and compared facial expressivity between PD and AD patients. We compared facial emotion expressivity in patients with PD, AD, and healthy controls (HCs). Twenty-four PD patients, 24 AD patients and 24 HCs were videotaped during neutral facial expressions and while posing six facial emotions (anger, surprise, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness). Fifteen raters were asked to evaluate the videos using MDS-UPDRS-III (item 3.2) and to identify the corresponding emotion from a seven-forced-choice response format. We measured the percentage of accuracy, the reaction time (RT), and the confidence level (CL) in the perceived accuracy of the raters’ responses. We found the highest MDS-UPDRS 3.2 scores in PD, a...

Facial Emotion Recognition Impairment in Patients with Parkinson's Disease and Isolated Apathy

2010

Apathy is a frequent feature of Parkinson's disease (PD), usually related with executive dysfunction. However, in a subgroup of PD patients apathy may represent the only or predominant neuropsychiatric feature. To understand the mechanisms underlying apathy in PD, we investigated emotional processing in PD patients with and without apathy and in healthy controls (HC), assessed by a facial emotion recognition task (FERT). We excluded PD patients with cognitive impairment, depression, other affective disturbances and previous surgery for PD. PD patients with apathy scored significantly worse in the FERT, performing worse in fear, anger, and sadness recognition. No differences, however, were found between nonapathetic PD patients and HC. These findings suggest the existence of a disruption of emotional-affective processing in cognitive preserved PD patients with apathy. To identify specific dysfunction of limbic structures in PD, patients with isolated apathy may have therapeutic and prognostic implications.

Deficits in decoding emotional facial expressions in Parkinson’s disease

Neuropsychologia, 2004

The basal ganglia have numerous connections not only with the motor cortex but also with the prefrontal and limbic cortical areas. Therefore, basal ganglia lesions can disturb motor function but also cognitive function and emotion processing. The aim of the present study was to assess the consequences of Parkinson's disease (PD) on ability to decode emotional facial expressions (EFEs)-a method commonly used to investigate non-verbal emotion processing.