García-Casal J Antonio, Goñi-Imizcoz Miguel, Perea-Bartolomé M Victoria, Soto-Pérez Felipe, Smith Sarah Jane, Calvo-Simal Sara, Franco-Martín Manuel
University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.
Department of Research and Development, Iberian Research Psycho-sciences Institute, INTRAS Foundation, Zamora, Spain.
J Alzheimers Dis. 2017;57(3):937-951. doi: 10.3233/JAD-160940.
The ability to recognize emotional expression is essential for social interactions, adapting to the environment, and quality of life. Emotion recognition is impaired in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD), thus rehabilitation of these skills has the potential to elicit significant benefits.
This study sought to establish whether emotion recognition capacity could be rehabilitated in people with AD.
Thirty-six participants with AD were assigned to one of three conditions: an experimental group (EG) that received 20 sessions of rehabilitation of emotion recognition and 20 sessions of cognitive stimulation therapy (CST), a control group (CG) that received 40 sessions of CST, and a treatment as usual group (TAU).
A positive treatment effect favoring the EG was found; participants were better able to correctly identify emotions (p = 0.021), made fewer errors of commission (p = 0.002), had greater precision of processing (p = 0.021), and faster processing speed (p = 0.001). Specifically, the EG were better able to identify sadness (p = 0.016), disgust (p = 0.005), and the neutral expression (p = 0.014), with quicker processing speed for disgust (p = 0.002). These gains were maintained at one month follow-up with the exception of processing speed for surprise, which improved.
Capacity to recognize facial expressions of emotions can be improved through specific rehabilitation in people with AD, and gains are still present at a one month follow up. These findings have implications for the design of rehabilitation techniques for people with AD that may lead to improved quality of life and social interactions for this population.
识别情感表达的能力对于社交互动、适应环境和生活质量至关重要。阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者的情感识别能力受损，因此恢复这些技能有可能带来显著益处。
本研究旨在确定AD患者的情感识别能力是否可以恢复。
36名AD患者被分配到三种情况之一：实验组（EG）接受20次情感识别康复训练和20次认知刺激疗法（CST），对照组（CG）接受40次CST，以及常规治疗组（TAU）。
发现有利于EG的积极治疗效果；参与者能够更好地正确识别情绪（p = 0.021），犯的错误更少（p = 0.002），处理精度更高（p = 0.021），处理速度更快（p = 0.001）。具体而言，EG能够更好地识别悲伤（p = 0.016）、厌恶（p = 0.005）和中性表情（p = 0.014），对厌恶的处理速度更快（p = 0.002）。除惊讶的处理速度有所提高外，这些收获在1个月的随访中得以维持。
通过对AD患者进行特定的康复训练，可以提高识别面部表情情感的能力，并且在1个月的随访中仍有改善。这些发现对AD患者康复技术的设计具有启示意义，可能会改善该人群的生活质量和社交互动。
