VDM Schafer, M: Emotional Processing Deficits in Parkinson's Dis

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.