Emotion Recognition and Alexithymia in Parkinson's Disease Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Basic emotions are expressed through facial expressions and are an important communicator to the outside world. Patients with Parkinson's disease lose this skill due to the often apparent mask-like face. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify differences in recognition and perception of emotion between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy subjects. Method: 34 medically controlled patients with Parkinson's disease were examined regarding their recognition by using the facially expressed emotion labeling test and regarding their own emotion perception by using the Toronto alexi-thymia scale-26. The results were compared to data of already existing studies. Results: Patients with Parkinson's disease had significant problems in recognising mimic facial expressions in comparison to healthy subjects (p = 0.001). In addition, they needed significantly more time to correctly attribute the expressions to the emotions (p = 0.001). The final results of the FEEL test correlated highly with the response time (p = 0.001; r = -0.665). Their perception of own emotions (TAS-26) was also constricted (p = 0.001). Correlation between the results of the FEEL test and the TAS-26 was poor (p = 0.020; r = -0.404). Conclusions: Patients with Parkinson's disease showed deteriorations in recognising facial expressions and in attributing them to the appropriate emotions. However, alexithymia features were not found. Patients with good emotion recognition seem to have fewer problems in recognising their own emotions.