Open AccessACCUMBENS AREA MAY PLAY A ROLE IN FACIAL RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONS IN A LOW-EDUCATED POPULATION WITH MILD ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
Author(s) -
Bruna Ciarlini,
Flávia E Silva,
Álissa Moura,
Emmanuelle Silva Tavares Sobreira,
Roberto Paiva,
Norberto Anízio Ferreira Frota,
Fernanda Carvalho
Publication year - 2021
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
DOI - 10.5327/1980-5764.rpda064
Subject(s) - disgust , psychology , surprise , audiology , dementia , correlation , atrophy , population , cohort , disease , medicine , clinical psychology , communication , geometry , mathematics , environmental health , anger
Background: There is no consensus on how recognition of universal facial emotions can be affected in low-educated individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Objective: To assess the performance of Facial Recognition of Emotions Test (FERT) and to correlate with patterns of cortical atrophy measured through Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) in low-educated individuals with mild AD dementia compared to cognitively healthy people. Methods: Retrospective cohort of 24 adult volunteers with 4 years of schooling or less were included. Among them, 13 participants had a diagnosis of mild AD. Data obtained by VBM and FERT result were correlated. Results: AD group had a worse performance in the total FERT score (p <0.001). There was a statistically significant difference in the recognition of surprise, disgust and neutrality (p <0.001). A more intense and consistent correlation was observed between the volume of the Accumbens Area (AA) and FERT performance in the total group (r=0.817 and p <0.05). This correlation remained significant for emotion “disgust” only in the AD group (r=0.769 and p <0.05). Conclusion: We found a significant difference in the recognition of surprise, disgust and neutral emotions between groups. The brain region that was most associated with these emotions was the AA, with greater consistency in the difficulty in recognizing the emotion of disgust, in the AD.