UMR 5292, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL), CNRS, INSERM, U1028, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université of Lyon, Lyon, France.
University of Lyon, Lyon, France.
Sci Rep. 2021 Sep 17;11(1):18575. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-97788-1.
Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education. Twenty-eight participants (13 PD patients and 15 healthy matched control participants) were asked to rate the emotional valence of short movies depicting emotional interactions between two human characters presented with the "Point Light Displays" technique. To ensure understanding of the perceived scene, participants were asked to briefly describe each of the evaluated movies. Patients' emotional valence evaluations were less intense than those of controls for both positive (p < 0.001) and negative (p < 0.001) emotional expressions, even though patients were able to correctly describe the depicted scene. Our results extend the previously observed impaired processing of emotional facial expressions to impaired processing of emotions expressed by body language. This study may support the hypothesis that PD affects the embodied simulation of emotional expression and the potentially involved mirror neuron system.
帕金森病（PD）患者观察到的一些行为障碍可能与社交信息处理的改变有关，包括情感表达。PD 患者可能难以产生和察觉全身运动所传达的情感。本研究的目的是比较 PD 患者和年龄、性别和教育程度相匹配的健康对照组对情绪全身表达的效价判断。28 名参与者（13 名 PD 患者和 15 名健康对照组）被要求用“点光显示”技术评估描述两个人物之间情感互动的短片的情感效价。为了确保对感知场景的理解，参与者被要求简要描述每个被评估的电影。患者的情感效价评估不如对照组强烈，无论是积极的（p<0.001）还是消极的（p<0.001）情感表达，尽管患者能够正确描述所描绘的场景。我们的结果将之前观察到的情绪面部表情处理受损扩展到身体语言表达的情绪处理受损。这项研究可能支持 PD 影响情感表达的具身模拟以及潜在涉及的镜像神经元系统的假说。
