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Recognition of facial and musical emotions in P arkinson's disease
Author(s) -
Saenz A.,
Doé de Maindreville A.,
Henry A.,
Labbey S.,
Bakchine S.,
Ehrlé N.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
european journal of neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.881
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1468-1331
pISSN - 1351-5101
DOI - 10.1111/ene.12040
Subject(s) - sadness , psychology , disgust , anger , facial expression , audiology , cognitive psychology , population , clinical psychology , medicine , communication , environmental health
Background and purpose Patients with amygdala lesions were found to be impaired in recognizing the fear emotion both from face and from music. In patients with P arkinson's disease ( PD ), impairment in recognition of emotions from facial expressions was reported for disgust, fear, sadness and anger, but no studies had yet investigated this population for the recognition of emotions from both face and music. Methods The ability to recognize basic universal emotions (fear, happiness and sadness) from both face and music was investigated in 24 medicated patients with PD and 24 healthy controls. The patient group was tested for language (verbal fluency tasks), memory (digit and spatial span), executive functions ( S imilarities and P icture Completion subtests of the WAIS III , B rixton and S troop tests), visual attention ( B ells test), and fulfilled self‐assessment tests for anxiety and depression. Results Results showed that the PD group was significantly impaired for recognition of both fear and sadness emotions from facial expressions, whereas their performance in recognition of emotions from musical excerpts was not different from that of the control group. The scores of fear and sadness recognition from faces were neither correlated to scores in tests for executive and cognitive functions, nor to scores in self‐assessment scales. Conclusion We attributed the observed dissociation to the modality (visual vs. auditory) of presentation and to the ecological value of the musical stimuli that we used. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the care of patients with PD .