Facial emotion recognition and judgment of affective scenes in Parkinson's disease

• Published in: Heliyon 2024-06, Vol.10 (12), p.e32947, Article e32947
• Main Authors: Salfi, Federico, Toro, Stefano, Saporito, Gennaro, Sucapane, Patrizia, Marano, Massimo, Montaruli, Gianluca, Cacchio, Angelo, Ferrara, Michele, Pistoia, Francesca
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2405-8440; 2405-8440
• DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e32947

Emotional dysfunctions in Parkinson's disease (PD) remain a controversial issue. While previous investigations showed compromised recognition of expressive faces in PD, no studies evaluated potential deficits in recognizing the emotional valence of affective scenes. This study aimed to investigate both facial emotion recognition performance and the ability to judge affective scenes in PD patients. Forty PD patients (mean age ± SD: 64.50 ± 8.19 years; 27 men) and forty healthy subjects (64.95 ± 8.25 years; 27 men) were included. Exclusion criteria were previous psychiatric disorders, previous Deep Brain Stimulation, and cognitive impairment. Participants were evaluated through the Ekman 60-Faces test and the International Affective Picture System. The accuracy in recognizing the emotional valence of facial expressions and affective scenes was compared between groups using linear mixed models. Pearson's correlation was performed to test the association between accuracy measures. The groups did not differ in sex, age, education, and Mini-Mental State Examination scores. Patients showed a lower recognition accuracy of facial expressions (68.54 % ± 15.83 %) than healthy participants (78.67 % ± 12.04 %; p