Emotion recognition and experience in Huntington's disease: Is there a differential impairment?

AbstractFindings on affective processing deficits in Huntington's disease (HD) have been inconsistent. It is still not clear whether HD patients are afflicted by specific deficits in emotion recognition and experience. We tested 28 symptomatic HD patients and presented them with pictures depicting facial expressions of emotions (Karolinska-Set) and with affective scenes (International Affective Picture System; IAPS). The faces were judged according to the displayed intensity of six basic emotions, whereas the scenes received intensity ratings for the elicited emotions in the viewer. Patients' responses were compared with those of 28 healthy controls. HD patients gave lower intensity ratings for facial expressions of anger, disgust and surprise than controls. Patients' recognition deficits were associated with reduced functional capacity, such as problems with social interactions. Moreover, their classification accuracy was reduced for angry, disgusted, sad and surprised faces. When judging affective scenes for the elicitation of happiness, disgust and fear, HD patients had a tendency to estimate them as more intense than controls. This finding points to a differential impairment in emotion recognition and emotion experience in HD. We found no significant correlations between emotion experience/recognition ratings and CAG repeats, symptom duration and UHDRS Motor Assessment in the patient group

Facial Emotion Recognition in Parkinson's Disease: An fMRI Investigation.

Findings of behavioral studies on facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) are very heterogeneous. Therefore, the present investigation additionally used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to compare brain activation during emotion perception between PD patients and healthy controls.We included 17 nonmedicated, nondemented PD patients suffering from mild to moderate symptoms and 22 healthy controls. The participants were shown pictures of facial expressions depicting disgust, fear, sadness, and anger and they answered scales for the assessment of affective traits. The patients did not report lowered intensities for the displayed target emotions, and showed a comparable rating accuracy as the control participants. The questionnaire scores did not differ between patients and controls. The fMRI data showed similar activation in both groups except for a generally stronger recruitment of somatosensory regions in the patients.Since somatosensory cortices are involved in the simulation of an observed emotion, which constitutes an important mechanism for emotion recognition, future studies should focus on activation changes within this region during the course of disease

Overview of descriptive data for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).

<p>f: female, m: male; TEDD: Test for Early Detection of Dementia; QADP: Questionnaire for the Assessment of Disgust Proneness; BDI: Beck Depression Inventory; STAI: State Trait Anxiety Inventory (trait scale); STAXI: State Trait Anger Inventory (trait scale).</p><p>Overview of descriptive data for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).</p

Regions with increased activation in patients compared to controls.

<p>Regions with increased activation in patients compared to controls.</p

Comparison of brain activation in the emotion conditions between patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).

<p>BA = Brodmann Area; H = hemisphere, MNI coordinates (x,y,z), <i>p</i>(FWE) = corrected for family-wise error, CS = cluster size (number of voxels).</p><p>Comparison of brain activation in the emotion conditions between patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).</p