Chaby Laurence, Narme Pauline
CNRS UMR 8189, Laboratoire de psychologie et neurosciences cognitives, Université Paris Descartes, France.
Psychol Neuropsychiatr Vieil. 2009 Mar;7(1):31-42. doi: 10.1684/pnv.2008.0154.
The ability to recognize facial identity and emotional facial expression is central to social relationships. This paper reviews studies concerning face recognition and emotional facial expression during normal aging as well as in neurodegenerative diseases occurring in the elderly. It focuses on Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal and semantic dementia, and also Parkinson's disease. The results of studies on healthy elderly individuals show subtle alterations in the recognition of facial identity and emotional facial expression from the age of 50 years, and increasing after 70. Studies in neurodegenerative diseases show that - during their initial stages - face recognition and facial expression can be specifically affected. Little has been done to assess these difficulties in clinical practice. They could constitute a useful marker for differential diagnosis, especially for the clinical differentiation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) from frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Social difficulties and some behavioural problems observed in these patients may, at least partly, result from these deficits in face processing. Thus, it is important to specify the possible underlying anatomofunctional substrates of these deficits as well as to plan suitable remediation programs.
识别面部身份和面部表情的能力是社会关系的核心。本文综述了有关正常衰老过程中以及老年人发生的神经退行性疾病中的人脸识别和面部表情的研究。它主要关注阿尔茨海默病、额颞叶和语义性痴呆，以及帕金森病。对健康老年人的研究结果表明，从50岁起，面部身份识别和面部表情识别就会出现细微变化，70岁以后变化加剧。神经退行性疾病的研究表明，在疾病初期，人脸识别和面部表情可能会受到特异性影响。在临床实践中，对这些困难的评估做得很少。它们可能构成一个有用的鉴别诊断标志物，特别是用于阿尔茨海默病（AD）与额颞叶痴呆（FTD）的临床鉴别。在这些患者中观察到的社交困难和一些行为问题可能至少部分源于这些面部处理缺陷。因此，明确这些缺陷可能的潜在解剖功能基础以及制定合适的补救方案很重要。
