Emotional Processing Deficits in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is known to cause
detrimental effects to motor function and cognition
and in turn impact emotion expression. There is
conflicting evidence as to whether PD also affects
emotion comprehension. This book investigated the
effects of PD on emotion comprehension, social
cognition and autobiographical memory. Sixteen
patients with PD and controls were tested on a range
of emotion recognition measures including facial
expressions, prosody, written vignettes, imagery,
pictures of emotion, social cognition, and an
autobiographical memory task. The PD group did not
show pervasive deficits in emotion recognition
overall. Deficits were demonstrated in recognising
fearful, angry and neutral tones, facial expressions
of disgust, and some aspects of social cognition.
The evidence suggested that PD is thought to cause
subtle deficits in emotion comprehension which are
only elucidated through complex tasks. The effects
of PD on complex processing also impact social
cognition, which relies on complex emotion
recognition. Findings also support a role for the
basal ganglia and fronto-striatal connections in
emotion comprehension.

Autorentext

Molly Clark Schafer, Doctor of Clinical Neuropsychology and Masters of Science at Sydney University.

Klappentext

Parkinson's disease (PD) is known to cause detrimental effects to motor function and cognition and in turn impact emotion expression. There is conflicting evidence as to whether PD also affects emotion comprehension. This book investigated the effects of PD on emotion comprehension, social cognition and autobiographical memory. Sixteen patients with PD and controls were tested on a range of emotion recognition measures including facial expressions, prosody, written vignettes, imagery, pictures of emotion, social cognition, and an autobiographical memory task. The PD group did not show pervasive deficits in emotion recognition overall. Deficits were demonstrated in recognising fearful, angry and neutral tones, facial expressions of disgust, and some aspects of social cognition. The evidence suggested that PD is thought to cause subtle deficits in emotion comprehension which are only elucidated through complex tasks. The effects of PD on complex processing also impact social cognition, which relies on complex emotion recognition. Findings also support a role for the basal ganglia and fronto-striatal connections in emotion comprehension.