A meta-analysis of performance on emotion recognition tasks in Parkinson’s disease.

Abstract

Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) have shown deficits in the ability to recognize emotion. However, these results have been inconsistent. In addition, questions remain about whether any deficit in PD is secondary to depression and broader cognitive impairments, and the effects of stimulus modality, task type, and specific emotion remain unclear. A meta-analysis of 34 comparisons, using data from 1,295 individual participants, was conducted to (a) provide a reliable estimate of the magnitude of the purported deficit in emotion recognition and (b) examine the influence of several potential moderators of emotion recognition abilities in PD. Results show a robust link between PD and specific deficits in recognizing emotion, from both the face and the voice (overall effect size g ϭ 0.52). The deficit extends across stimulus modalities and task types and is particularly acute with respect to negative emotions. Although this deficit does not appear to be secondary to comorbid depression or visuospatial impairments, the potential role of working memory constraints warrants further investigation. We highlight the potential implications of these findings for communication abilities in PD.

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

“…This is congruent with the meta‐analysis by Gray and Tickle‐Degnen 12. Two years earlier, Clark and collaborators13 also underlined the deleterious impact of this deficit on patients' social relationships, highlighting a negative correlation between their FER difficulties and their level of interpersonal distress.…”

“…Moreover, it is based on a qualitative review. See Gray and Tickle‐Degnen12 for an estimation of the deficit magnitude.…”

“…At last, some authors who explicitly investigated the recognition of specific emotions showed that although recognition was impaired for all the emotions they tested, some were more poorly recognized than others 24, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39. Like Gray and Tickle‐Degnen,12 we noted that FER deficit in PD affected all the basic emotions but was greater for negative emotions (64% of studies highlighted a global deficit, 44% for anger, 27% for happiness; Table 1). This could echo the subcortical pathway involving the pulvinar, the amygdala, and the striatum, which may lead to a coarse but fast visual information processing 40, 41.…”

“…First, these results were based on the subset of studies reporting participants' performance as a function of emotion. Second, Gray and Tickle‐Degnen12 chose to pool data across modalities (face/voice). Third, we should bear in mind the greater diversity of negative as opposed to positive emotions in the literature.…”

“…However, studies assessing FER in PD still report contradictory results. Although 2 reviews and 1 meta‐analysis revealed an FER deficit in PD and outlined potential biasing factors,9, 11, 12 the origins of this inconsistency are unclear, and several questions remain unanswered. For instance, what is the actual effect of dopaminergic medication on FER in PD?…”