Yitzhak Neta, Gurevich Tanya, Inbar Noit, Lecker Maya, Atias Doron, Avramovich Hadasa, Aviezer Hillel
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Movement Disorders Unit, Neurological Institute, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Sagol School of Neuroscience, Israel.
Cortex. 2020 May;126:343-354. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.019. Epub 2020 Feb 7.
Emotion recognition deficits in Huntington's disease (HD) are well-established. However, most previous studies have measured emotion recognition using stereotypical and intense facial expressions, which are easily recognized and artificial in their appearance. By contrast, everyday expressions are often more challenging to recognize, as they are subtle and non-stereotypical. Therefore, previous studies may have inflated the performance of HD patients and it is difficult to generalize their results to facial expressions encountered in everyday social interactions. In the present study, we tested 21 symptomatic HD patients and 28 healthy controls with a traditional facial expression set, as well as a novel stimulus set which exhibits subtle and non-stereotypical facial expressions. While HD patients demonstrated poor emotion recognition in both sets, when tested with the novel, ecologically looking facial expressions, patients' performance declined to chance level. Intriguingly, patients' emotion recognition deficit was predicted only by the severity of their motor symptoms, not by their cognitive status. This suggests a possible mechanism for emotion recognition impairments in HD, in line with embodiment theories. From this point of view, poor motor control may affect patients' ability to subtly produce and simulate a perceived facial expression, which in turn may contribute to their impaired recognition.
亨廷顿舞蹈症（HD）患者存在情绪识别缺陷，这一点已得到充分证实。然而，此前大多数研究使用的是刻板且强烈的面部表情来测量情绪识别，这些表情易于识别且外观较为刻意。相比之下，日常表情往往更具挑战性，因为它们微妙且不刻板。因此，先前的研究可能高估了HD患者的表现，并且很难将其结果推广到日常社交互动中遇到的面部表情上。在本研究中，我们用传统面部表情集以及展现微妙且非刻板面部表情的新型刺激集对21名有症状的HD患者和28名健康对照者进行了测试。虽然HD患者在两组测试中情绪识别能力都较差，但在用新型的、具有自然外观的面部表情进行测试时，患者的表现降至随机水平。有趣的是，仅通过患者运动症状的严重程度就能预测其情绪识别缺陷，而不是认知状态。这表明了HD患者情绪识别受损的一种可能机制，与具身理论相符。从这一角度来看，运动控制不佳可能会影响患者微妙地产生和模拟所感知面部表情的能力，进而导致其识别能力受损。
