Vocal emotion decoding in the subthalamic nucleus: An intracranial ERP study in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

a b s t r a c tUsing intracranial local field potential (LFP) recordings in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), we explored the electrophysiological activity of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in response to emotional stimuli in the auditory modality. Previous studies focused on the influence of visual stimuli. To this end, we recorded LFPs within the STN in response to angry, happy, and neutral prosodies in 13 patients with PD who had just undergone implantation of DBS electrodes. We observed specific modulation of the right STN in response to anger and happiness, as opposed to neutral prosody, occurring at around 200-300 ms post-onset, and later at around 850-950 ms post-onset for anger and at around 3250-3350 ms post-onset for happiness. Taken together with previous reports of modulated STN activity in response to emotional visual stimuli, the present results appear to confirm that the STN is involved in emotion processing irrespective of stimulus valence and sensory modality.

Hemispheric specialization of the basal ganglia during vocal emotion decoding: Evidence from asymmetric Parkinson's disease and 18FDG PET

“…Regarding studies in patients with Parkinson's disease, one found that both LPD and RPD had poorer scores than HC for the recognition of emotional prosody stimuli (Ariatti et al, 2008), three studies reported negative results (Blonder et al, 1989;Buxton et al, 2013;Clark et al, 2008), four studies reported results in favor of the specific involvement of the right basal ganglia in vocal emotion decoding (Eitan et al, 2013;Garrido-Vasquez et al, 2013;Péron et al, 2017;Ventura et al, 2012), while none reported results in favor of the specific involvement of the left basal ganglia in this process.…”

“…A basal ganglia dysfunction would presumably create a noisy signal, desynchronizing the transiently connected systems needed for the process to take place at Time T. At the behavioral level, this would translate into a disturbance in, say, the decoding of affective cues. Some of the model's predictions have already been demonstrated (Peron et al, 2015;Peron, Fruhholz, Ceravolo, & Grandjean, 2016;Péron et al, 2017). However, the model does not deal with the possible hemispheric specialization of the basal ganglia within this process, and empirical evidence is contradictory, notably in the domain of vocal emotion decoding.…”

Different effects of levodopa and subthalamic stimulation on emotional conflict in Parkinson's disease

“…Deficits in recognition and processing of different emotional modalities have frequently been reported in Parkinson's disease patients (Benke, Bosch, & Andree, 1998;Bowers et al, 2006;Gray & Tickle-Degnen, 2010;Jacobs, Shuren, Bowers, & Heilman, 1995;Peron, Frühholz, Ceravolo, & Grandjean, 2016;Peron et al, 2017;Schroder, Mobes, Schute, & Dengler, 2006). Two major mechanisms have been invoked to explain abnormal emotional processing in Parkinson's disease: dysfunction of the mesocorticolimbic basal ganglia circuit and the amygdala (Yoshimura, Kawamura, Masaoka, & Homma, 2005).…”

“…Activated regions in yellow/red; deactivated regions in blue [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]4.1 | Emotional processing disturbances in Parkinson's disease patientsDeficits in recognition and processing of different emotional modalities have frequently been reported in Parkinson's disease patients(Benke, Bosch, & Andree, 1998;Bowers et al, 2006;Gray & Tickle- Degnen, 2010;Jacobs, Shuren, Bowers, & Heilman, 1995;Peron, Frühholz, Ceravolo, & Grandjean, 2016;Peron et al, 2017;Schroder, Mobes, Schute, & Dengler, 2006). The regions with the strongest activation are in yellow [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]FIGURE 5 T maps (p < .05) of the source reconstruction showing the different effects of STN DBS and levodopa on cortical EEG 140-200 ms after the emotional stimuli.…”

Subthalamic nucleus local field potentials recordings reveal subtle effects of promised reward during conflict resolution in Parkinson’s disease

“…Patients' clinical details are summarized in Table 1. Targeting and bilateral implantation of stimulation electrodes was done as previously described (Péron et al, 2017). The electrodes model 50 used were Medtronic model 3389 (Medtronic Neurological Division, Minneapolis, MN, USA) with four platinum-iridium cylindrical surfaces (1.27 mm in diameter and 1.5 mm in length) and a contact-to-contact separation of 0.5 mm.…”