Altered Kinematics of Facial Emotion Expression and Emotion Recognition Deficits Are Unrelated in Parkinson's Disease.

BACKGROUND: Altered emotional processing, including reduced emotion facial expression and defective emotion recognition, has been reported in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, few studies have objectively investigated facial expression abnormalities in PD using neurophysiological techniques. It is not known whether altered facial expression and recognition in PD are related. OBJECTIVE: To investigate possible deficits in facial emotion expression and emotion recognition and their relationship, if any, in patients with PD. METHODS: Eighteen patients with PD and 16 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Facial expressions of emotion were recorded using a 3D optoelectronic system and analyzed using the facial action coding system. Possible deficits in emotion recognition were assessed using the Ekman test. Participants were assessed in one experimental session. Possible relationship between the kinematic variables of facial emotion expression, the Ekman test scores, and clinical and demographic data in patients were evaluated using the Spearman's test and multiple regression analysis. RESULTS: The facial expression of all six basic emotions had slower velocity and lower amplitude in patients in comparison to healthy controls (all Ps  0.05). Finally, no relationship emerged between kinematic variables of facial emotion expression, the Ekman test scores, and clinical and demographic data in patients (all Ps > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The results in this study provide further evidence of altered emotional processing in PD. The lack of any correlation between altered facial emotion expression kinematics and emotion recognition deficits in patients suggests that these abnormalities are mediated by separate pathophysiological mechanisms

Conspiracy, Emotion regulation, Emotion differentiation

The study investigates the association between conspiracist ideation, and emotion differentiation/regulation

A randomized trial that compared brain activity, efficacy and plausibility of open-label placebo treatment and cognitive repappraisal for reducing emotional distress

Abstract Placebo pills can reduce emotional distress even when recipients have been informed about the inert nature of the treatment. However, before such open-label placebos (OLPs) can be recommended for general clinical use, their efficacy and acceptability need to be further investigated and compared with established methods for emotion regulation, such as cognitive reappraisal (CR). The current study with functional magnetic resonance imaging compared the effects of an OLP pill with CR for reducing a specific form of emotional distress: disgust. Participants (150 healthy females) were randomly allocated to one of three groups, all of which were exposed to disgusting and neutral images (OLP, CR, PV: passive viewing). It was tested whether the three groups would differ in brain activity and reported disgust. Ratings for the perceived efficacy and plausibility of treatment were also compared between OLP and CR. Both OLP and CR increased the activity in a cognitive control region, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Relative to PV and OLP, CR reduced activity in the putamen and pallidum. These regions play an important role in decoding disgust signals from different modalities. Self-reports indicated that CR was perceived as a more effective and plausible intervention strategy than OLP. In conclusion, CR was a superior method for disgust regulation compared to OLP, both on the subjective as well as the neurobiological level. Future OLP studies are needed to test whether the observed effects generalize to other forms of emotional distress

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