Objective: To compare: (1) emotional decoding abilities and (2) executive functions between Parkinson’s disease patients (PD) and healthy controls.

Background: Emotion decoding abilities are important part of social interactions. They enable to plan social behaviors and appropriate communication. Some studies have shown emotional decoding impairment in PD but others have not documented any deficit. Most of previous studies were based only on facial expression recognition and did not compare abilities to decode emotions in more complex tasks, which are more similar to scenarios present in patients’ natural environment.

Methods: We assessed emotional processing using 4 sets of cartoon-like drawings of gradually increasing complexity: (1) icon – simple emotion icon, (2) boy – detailed drawings of human facial expression, (3) girl and (4) woman – drawings of people in various casual situations. Each set showed happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise and neutral in different order. More complex stimuli contained additional information about emotional content of drawings such as human facial expression (2,3,4), gestural poses or situational context (3,4). The assessment of executive functioning included: Trial Making Test Part 1 and 2 (TMT1, TMT2), digit backward, Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCFT), Verbal Fluency Test, Stroop test-part 3, Tower of London test (TOL) and Clock Test. Controls were matched according to age and education. All patients underwent evaluation for depressive symptoms.

Results: We included 31 PD patients without signs of dementia and 34 healthy controls. There was no difference between groups in decoding abilities on task 1. PD performed worse (p<0.05) in recognizing emotions from more complex features of stimuli (boy, girl, woman). Controls improved (p<0.05) in emotion recognition from stimuli of higher complexity: boy vs icon, girl vs icon, woman vs boy; whereas PD did not improve. In addition to impairment of working memory and processing speed patients with PD performed worse than controls on: ROCFT, TMT2 and Stroop test indicating worse executive functioning among this patients.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that processing of complex emotional stimuli is impaired in patients with Parkinson’s disease and might be associated with executive dysfunction.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/emotion-processing-in-parkinsons-disease-possible-link-between-inability-to-decode-complex-emotional-stimuli-and-impairment-of-executive-functions/