Blunted emotion judgments of body movements in Parkinson\u2019s disease

Emmanuelle Bellot,Pierre Krolak-Salmon,Claire Gentil,Isabelle Rouch,Marie-Hélène Coste,Floriane Delphin-Combe,Christina Schmitz,Elodie Pongan,Barbara Tillmann,Antoine Garnier-Crussard,Marie-Anne Hénaff

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-97788-1

Abstract

Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education. Twenty-eight participants (13 PD patients and 15 healthy matched control participants) were asked to rate the emotional valence of short movies depicting emotional interactions between two human characters presented with the “Point Light Displays” technique. To ensure understanding of the perceived scene, participants were asked to briefly describe each of the evaluated movies. Patients’ emotional valence evaluations were less intense than those of controls for both positive (p < 0.001) and negative (p < 0.001) emotional expressions, even though patients were able to correctly describe the depicted scene. Our results extend the previously observed impaired processing of emotional facial expressions to impaired processing of emotions expressed by body language. This study may support the hypothesis that PD affects the embodied simulation of emotional expression and the potentially involved mirror neuron system.

Highlights

Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions
PD patients and healthy control (HC) participants did not differ in terms of age, sex, education and their scores of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) (Table 1)
While PD patients were cognitively unimpaired and were able to correctly describe the displayed visual scenes, they were impaired in their emotional valence ratings of these scenes, compared to healthy controls

Summary

Introduction

Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotion recognition deficit in PD is associated with neural changes in several areas, including basal ganglia, limbic (notably amygdala), paralimbic and neocortical associative areas, as well as with impaired dopamine transmission in the mesocorticolimbic p athways[3,6,10] They may involve the mirror neuron system (MNS), according to the embodied simulation t heory[3,11,12,13]. HC group 15 68.60 ± 5.46 9/6 1.33 ± 0.62 5.87 ± 3.89 p-value own body language[16] This disruption may affect the access to own motor representations and impair “motor resonance” processing underpinned by the hypothesized MNS, which is used to understand and recognize emotions in others[17]

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