Chia-Yao Lin1, Li-Chuan Hsu1,2, Chon-Haw Tsai2,3, Yi-Min Tien4 1Graduate Institute of Neural and Cognitive Sciences, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan;
2School of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan;
3Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Neurology, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 4Department of Psychology, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
Discrimination of facial expressions in patients
with Parkinson's disease
zPrevious studies suggested that patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) could not recognize negative facial stimuli correctly, but these results were not generally accepted.
zPossibly confounding variables are the presentation time of target faces and the severity of PD motor deficits.
zIn the present study, we adopted a fast emotional
discrimination task (FEDT) to investigate the performance of PD patients in discriminating emotional facial
expressions.
zFace discrimination in FEDT is more similar to that in the real world.
zParticipants:
zPD patients took longer to discriminate happy, sad and angry faces than healthy controls (HC).
zPD patients also were less accurate in discriminating happy and sad faces compared to HC.
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Fast Emotional Discrimination Task (FEDT)
Fixation frame 500ms 300ms + Time Positive (happiness) Negative
(sadness, fear, anger) Ekman’s face test (Ekman & Frisen, 1979)
zWe also investigated whether PD’s performance in FEDT was related to the severity of motor deficits.
AGE BDI-II MMSE PD (n=28) 61.68 11.61 27.61 HC (n=28) 57.39 2.93 28.29
zParticipants:
zPD patients with less severe motor deficits discriminated sad faces less accurately than HC.
zCompared to HC, PD patients with greater motor deficits responded more slowly to happy, sad and angry faces and also were less accurate in discriminating happy and angry faces.
AGE BDI-II MMSE UPSRD III HC (n=28) 57.39 2.93 28.29 . PDs with lower motor score (n=14) 60.50 7.93 28.14 25.07 PDs with higher motor score (n=14) 62.86 15.29 27.07 49.71 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900
happiness sadness fear anger
R esp o n se t im e ( m s) HC PD 75 80 85 90 95 100
happiness sadness fear anger
A c c u ra c y ra te ( % ) HC PD
Discussion and Conclusion
zTo our knowledge, our study is the first to find that PD patients have selective deficits in discriminating positive faces.
zMotor deficits in PD patients impair the discrimination of facial expressions with discrimination getting worse as the motor deficit becomes more severe. Acknowledgment: Supported by National Science Council of Taiwan, 100-2410-H-039-001-MY2 ; E-mail: [email protected]
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900 950
happiness sadness fear anger
Re s p o n se t im e ( ms ) HC LPD HPD 75 80 85 90 95 100
happiness sadness fear anger
A ccu ra c y ra te ( % ) HC LPD HPD ms ms ms
Experiment 2 (PD with different severity of motor deficits vs. HC) Experiment 1 (PD vs. HC)
