Emotion processing impairment is a common non‐motor symptom in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Previous literature reported conflicting results concerning, in particular, the performance for different emotions, the relation with cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms and the affected stage of processing. This study aims at assessing emotion recognition and discrimination in PD. Recognition of six facial expressions was studied in order to clarify its relationship with motor, cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Sensitivity in discriminating happy and fearful faces was investigated to address controversial findings on impairment in early stages of emotion processing. To do so, seventy PD patients were tested with the Ekman 60 Faces test and compared with 46 neurologically unimpaired participants. Patients’ performances were correlated with clinical scales and neuropsychological tests. A subsample of 25 PD patients and 25 control participants were also tested with a backward masking paradigm for sensitivity in happiness and fear discrimination. Results showed that PD patients were impaired in facial emotion recognition, especially for fearful expressions. The performance correlated with perceptual, executive and general cognitive abilities, but facial expression recognition deficits were present even in cognitively unimpaired patients. In contrast, patients’ sensitivity in backward masking tasks was not reduced as compared to controls. Taken together our data demonstrate that facial emotion recognition, and fear expression in particular, is critically affected by neurodegeneration in PD and related to cognitive abilities; however, it appears before other cognitive impairments. Preserved performances in discriminating shortly presented facial expressions, suggest unimpaired early stages of emotion processing.

中文翻译：

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帕金森病的面部表情识别与辨别

情绪处理障碍是帕金森病 (PD) 中常见的非运动症状。以前的文献报道了相互矛盾的结果，特别是关于不同情绪的表现、与认知和神经精神症状的关系以及受影响的处理阶段。本研究旨在评估 PD 中的情绪识别和歧视。研究了六种面部表情的识别，以阐明其与运动、认知和神经精神症状的关系。对区分快乐和恐惧面孔的敏感性进行了调查，以解决在情绪处理早期阶段受损的有争议的发现。为此，70 名 PD 患者接受了 Ekman 60 Faces 测试，并与 46 名神经系统未受损的参与者进行了比较。患者的表现与临床量表和神经心理学测试相关。还对 25 名 PD 患者和 25 名对照参与者的子样本进行了后向掩蔽范式测试，以了解他们对幸福和恐惧歧视的敏感性。结果表明，PD患者的面部情绪识别能力受损，尤其是恐惧表情。表现与感知、执行和一般认知能力相关，但即使在认知未受损的患者中也存在面部表情识别缺陷。相比之下，与对照组相比，患者对后向掩蔽任务的敏感性并未降低。综上所述，我们的数据表明，面部情绪识别，尤其是恐惧表达，受到 PD 神经变性的严重影响，并与认知能力有关；然而，它出现在其他认知障碍之前。在辨别短期呈现的面部表情方面保留的表现表明情绪处理的早期阶段未受损害。