Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education. Twenty-eight participants (13 PD patients and 15 healthy matched control participants) were asked to rate the emotional valence of short movies depicting emotional interactions between two human characters presented with the “Point Light Displays” technique. To ensure understanding of the perceived scene, participants were asked to briefly describe each of the evaluated movies. Patients’ emotional valence evaluations were less intense than those of controls for both positive (p < 0.001) and negative (p < 0.001) emotional expressions, even though patients were able to correctly describe the depicted scene. Our results extend the previously observed impaired processing of emotional facial expressions to impaired processing of emotions expressed by body language. This study may support the hypothesis that PD affects the embodied simulation of emotional expression and the potentially involved mirror neuron system.

在帕金森病 (PD) 中观察到的一些行为障碍可能与社会信息处理的改变有关，包括情绪表达。由全身运动传达的情绪可能难以被 PD 患者产生和检测到。本研究的目的是比较 PD 个体和年龄、性别和教育相匹配的健康对照个体情绪全身表达的效价判断。28 名参与者（13 名 PD 患者和 15 名健康匹配的对照组参与者）被要求对描述两个人类角色之间情感互动的短片的情感效价进行评分，这些电影用“点光源显示”技术呈现。为了确保理解所感知的场景，参与者被要求简要描述每部评估过的电影。p  < 0.001) 和消极 ( p  < 0.001) 情绪表达，即使患者能够正确描述所描绘的场景。我们的研究结果将先前观察到的情绪面部表情处理受损扩展到肢体语言表达的情绪处理受损。这项研究可能支持 PD 影响情绪表达的具身模拟和可能涉及的镜像神​​经元系统的假设。