Journal of the Neurological Sciences
Volume 313, Issue 1 , Pages 13-16, 15 February 2012

Visuo-spatial interference affects the identification of emotional facial expressions in unmedicated Parkinson's patients☆

  • Beatriz García-Rodríguez

      Affiliations

    • Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
    • Neuroscience Group, Research Institute Hospital La Paz (IdiPaz), Spain
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author at: Facultad de Psicología, UNED, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34 91 3986280; fax: +34 91 3987958.
    • ,
  • Carmen Casares Guillén

      Affiliations

    • Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
    • ,
  • Rosa Jurado Barba

      Affiliations

    • Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
    • ,
  • Gabriel Rubio Valladolid

      Affiliations

    • Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
    • ,
  • José Antonio Molina Arjona

      Affiliations

    • Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
    • ,
  • Heiner Ellgring

      Affiliations

    • Julius Maximilians Universität, Würzburg, Germany

Received 1 March 2011; received in revised form 16 June 2011; accepted 30 September 2011. published online 26 October 2011.

Abstract 

There is evidence that visuo-spatial capacity can become overloaded when processing a secondary visual task (Dual Task, DT), as occurs in daily life. Hence, we investigated the influence of the visuo-spatial interference in the identification of emotional facial expressions (EFEs) in early stages of Parkinson's disease (PD). We compared the identification of 24 emotional faces that illustrate six basic emotions in, unmedicated recently diagnosed PD patients (16) and healthy adults (20), under two different conditions: a) simple EFE identification, and b) identification with a concurrent visuo-spatial task (Corsi Blocks). EFE identification by PD patients was significantly worse than that of healthy adults when combined with another visual stimulus.

Keywords: Parkinson's disease, De novo Parkinson patients, Emotional facial expressions, Visuo-spatial deficits

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☆ Originally submitted to the special issue "Proceedings of the 7th Congress of Mental and other Non-Motor Dysfunctions in Parkinson's Disease".

PII: S0022-510X(11)00603-4

doi:10.1016/j.jns.2011.09.041

Journal of the Neurological Sciences
Volume 313, Issue 1 , Pages 13-16, 15 February 2012

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