Impaired perception of emotions in Persian patients with mild Parkinson's disease

Background and Aim: Emotion perception plays a major role in proper communication with people in different social interactions. Parkinson's disease (PD) is due to a reduction in dopamine release in the ventral corpus striatum, subthalamic nucleus, and other areas of the basal ganglia. Some studies showed the perception emotion deficits in PD, but few studies investigated patients in early stage of PD. Methods: The study groups included ۲۸ PD patients (۱۶ men and ۱۲ women) and ۲۸ healthy subjects as neurologic normal control (NNC) group were matched with the PD group in age (۵۰-۶۵ years), gender and education. The PD group had no cognitive problems and depression and their disease severity stages were ۱-۲ based on Hoehn & Yahr test. The Persian affective voices (PAV) test was used to investigate perception emotion in both groups. This test evaluated happiness, sadness, pleasure, pain, anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and neutrality. The PAV was implemented on the patients during the medication phase. The PAV was evaluated under similar conditions and with the same method for both the experimental group with PD and the NNC group. Results: this study sought to determine the perception of emotions in Persian patients with mild Parkinson's disease: Conclusion Results: A significant difference was observed in the test scores between the experimental and control groups (z-۶.۴۳۴; P<۰.۰۰۱). This significant difference suggests that people with PD score significantly lower on the PAV compared to subjects without PD. The highest mean PAV test scores in the NNC group was related to sadness, neutrality, and happiness (۹۹.۷۰%, ۹۹.۵۵%, ۹۹.۵۵%), and fear (۸۴.۱%) had the lowest mean score. The lowest mean PAV test score in PD patients was related to fear (۴۰.۰۰%) and pleasure (۵۴.۱۴%), the highest mean score was related to sadness (۹۸.۵۷%). Conclusions: The Persian patients with mild PD had the most difficulty in perception of fear, pleasure, anger, and disgust. Difficulty in perception of emotions in patients with Parkinson's disease at early stages of disease may reflect amygdala disorder.

کلیدواژه ها:

Perception emotion ، Parkinson's disease ، Persian affective voices ، mild severity