Abstract
Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from motor and non-motor symptoms; 40% would develop dementia (PD-D). Impaired face and emotion processing in PD has been reported; however, the deficits of face processing in PD-D remain unclear. We investigated three essential aspects of face processing capacity in PD-D, and the associations between cognitive, neuropsychiatric assessments and task performances. Twenty-four PD-D patients (mean age: 74.0 ± 5.55) and eighteen age-matched healthy controls (HC) (mean age: 71.0 ± 6.20) received three computerized tasks, morphing-face discrimination, dynamic facial emotion recognition, and expression imitation. Compared to HC, PD-D patients had lower sensitivity (d’) and greater neural internal noises in discriminating faces; responded slower and had difficulties with negative emotions; imitated some expressions but with lower strength. Correlation analyses revealed that patients with advancing age, slow mentation, and poor cognition (but not motor symptoms) showed stronger deterioration in face perception. Importantly, these correlations were absent in the age-matched HC. The present study is among the first few examined face processing in patients with PD-D, and found consistent deficits correlated with advancing age and slow mentation. We propose that face discrimination task could be included as a potential test for the early detection of dementia in PD.
Highlights
Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from motor and non-motor symptoms; 40% would develop dementia (PD-D)
Studies reveal impaired face recognition in PD10,11, with performance correlated with gray matter density in the fusiform face areas (FFA)—the region involved in the visual analysis of face structure in the healthy brain[12,13]
While most studies focused on recognition memory in PD patients, very few inspected their perceptual discriminability under the framework of the signal detection theory[18]; it is unclear whether the patient’s impairments in
Summary
Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from motor and non-motor symptoms; 40% would develop dementia (PD-D). A recent study with Chinese patients[24] supported the mirror neuron hypothesis[25]; the PD group scored lower on both facial and vocal emotion processing than the healthy controls[25] and exhibited a significant correlation between emotion recognition and expression performance[24,25].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
