Lawrence Andrew D, Goerendt Ines K, Brooks David J
MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Rd, Cambridge CB2 2EF, UK.
Neuropsychologia. 2007 Jan 7;45(1):65-74. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.016. Epub 2006 Jun 15.
We have previously reported that acute dopaminergic blockade in healthy volunteers results in a transient disruption of the recognition of facial expressions of anger, whilst leaving intact the recognition of other facial expressions (including fear and disgust) and facial identity processing. Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by cell loss in dopaminergic neuronal populations, and hence we predicted that PD would be associated with impaired anger recognition. We reasoned that treatment with dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) could mask any deficit present in PD, and therefore studied facial expression recognition in a group of PD patients transiently withdrawn from DRT. Seventeen PD patients were compared to 21 age- and IQ-matched controls on the Ekman 60 task, which required the forced-choice labelling of 10 exemplars of each of six facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise). In line with our predictions, PD patients showed a selective impairment in the recognition of facial expressions of anger. This deficit was not related to the PD patients' performance on the Benton unfamiliar-face matching task, which was normal, nor was the deficit related to overall disease severity, or to depression symptoms. However, as predicted by simulation theories, impaired anger recognition in PD was related to reduced levels of the anger-linked temperament trait, exploratory excitability. The results extend our previous findings of a role for dopamine in the processing of facial expressions of anger, and demonstrate the power of adopting a phylogenetic, comparative perspective on emotions.
我们之前曾报道，健康志愿者急性多巴胺能阻断会导致对面部愤怒表情识别的短暂破坏，而其他面部表情（包括恐惧和厌恶）的识别以及面部身份处理则不受影响。帕金森病（PD）的特征是多巴胺能神经元群体的细胞丢失，因此我们预测PD会与愤怒识别受损有关。我们推断多巴胺替代疗法（DRT）可能会掩盖PD中存在的任何缺陷，因此研究了一组暂时停用DRT的PD患者的面部表情识别。在埃克曼60任务中，将17名PD患者与21名年龄和智商匹配的对照组进行比较，该任务要求对六种面部表情（愤怒、厌恶、恐惧、悲伤、快乐、惊讶）中的每一种的10个示例进行强制选择标记。与我们的预测一致，PD患者在识别面部愤怒表情方面表现出选择性受损。这种缺陷与PD患者在本顿不熟悉面孔匹配任务中的表现无关，该任务表现正常，也与整体疾病严重程度或抑郁症状无关。然而，正如模拟理论所预测的，PD患者愤怒识别受损与愤怒相关气质特征探索性兴奋性水平降低有关。这些结果扩展了我们之前关于多巴胺在面部愤怒表情处理中作用的发现，并证明了从系统发育、比较的角度研究情绪的作用。
