Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T05:17:51.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Facial emotion recognition in patients with subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2015

J. Pietschnig ,
R. Aigner-Wöber ,
N. Reischenböck ,
I. Kryspin-Exner ,
D. Moser ,
S. Klug ,
E. Auff ,
P. Dal-Bianco ,
G. Pusswald  and
J. Lehrner
J. Pietschnig
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Department of Psychology, School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
R. Aigner-Wöber
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
N. Reischenböck
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
I. Kryspin-Exner
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
D. Moser
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
S. Klug
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
E. Auff
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
P. Dal-Bianco
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
G. Pusswald
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
J. Lehrner*
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Priv. Doz. Mag. Dr. J. Lehrner, Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Währinger Gürtel, 18-20, A-1097, Wien. Phone: 0043-1-40400-31090; Fax: 0043-1-40400-31410. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background:

Deficits in facial emotion recognition (FER) have been shown to substantially impair several aspects in everyday life of affected individuals (e.g. social functioning). Presently, we aim at assessing differences in emotion recognition performance in three patient groups suffering from mild forms of cognitive impairment compared to healthy controls.

Methods:

Performance on a concise emotion recognition test battery (VERT-K) of 68 patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), 44 non-amnestic (non-aMCI), and 25 amnestic patients (aMCI) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was compared with an age-equivalent sample of 138 healthy controls all of which were recruited within the framework of the Vienna Conversion to Dementia Study. Additionally, patients and controls underwent individual assessment using a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery examining attention, executive functioning, language, and memory (NTBV), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and a measure of premorbid IQ (WST).

Results:

Type of diagnosis showed a significant effect on emotion recognition performance, indicating progressively deteriorating results as severity of diagnosis increased. Between-groups effect sizes were substantial, showing non-trivial effects in all comparisons (Cohen's ds from −0.30 to −0.83) except for SCD versus controls. Moreover, emotion recognition performance was higher in women and positively associated with premorbid IQ.

Conclusions:

Our findings indicate substantial effects of progressive neurological damage on emotion recognition in patients. Importantly, emotion recognition deficits were observable in non-amnestic patients as well, thus conceivably suggesting associations between decreased recognition performance and global cognitive decline. Premorbid IQ appears to act as protective factor yielding lesser deficits in patients showing higher IQs.

Keywords

facial emotion recognitionsubjective cognitive declinemild cognitive impairment
Type
Research Article
Information
International Psychogeriatrics , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , March 2016 , pp. 477 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © International Psychogeriatric Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allender, J. and Kaszniak, A. W. (1989). Processing of emotional cues in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. International Journal of Neuroscience, 46, 147–155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, I. M. et al. (2011). State-dependent alteration in face emotion recognition in depression. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 198, 302–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bio, D. S., Soeiro-de-Souza, M. G., Garcia Otaduy, M. C., Machado-Vieira, R. and Moreno, R. A. (2013). The impact of limbic system morphology on facial emotion recognition in bipolar I disorder and healthy controls. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 9, 743–751.Google ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edn. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Derntl, B., Kryspin-Exner, I., Fernbach, E., Moser, E. and Habel, U. (2008). Emotion recognition accuracy in healthy young females is associated with cycle phase. Hormones and Behavior, 53, 90–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folstein, M., Folstein, S. and Hugh, P. R. (1975). Mini-Mental State: a practical method for grading the cognitive stat of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12, 189–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatterer, G. (2008). Alters-Konzentrations-Test (AKT) (2nd restandardized edition). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Goodglass, H. and Kaplan, P. (1983). The Assessment of Aphasia and Related Disorders, 2nd edn. Philadelphia: Lea and Fabinger.Google Scholar
Grundman, M. et al. (2004). Mild cognitive impairment can be distinguished from Alzheimer disease and normal aging for clinical trials. Archives of Neurology, 61, 59–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hargrave, R., Maddock, R. J. and Stone, V. (2002). Impaired recognition of facial expressions of emotion in Alzheimer's disease. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 14, 64–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hautzinger, M., Keller, F. and Kühner, C. (2006). Beck Depressions-Inventar, Revision (BDI-II). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Harcourt.Google Scholar
He, J., Farias, S., Martinez, O., Reed, B., Mungas, D. and DeCarli, C. (2009). Differences in brain volume, hippocampal volume, cerebrovascular risk factors, and apoliprotein E4 among mild cognitive impairment subtypes. JAMA Neurology, 66, 1393–1399.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, H., Kessler, H., Eppel, T., Rukavina, S. and Traue, H. C. (2010). Expression intensity, gender and facial emotion recognition: women recognize only subtle facial emotions better than men. Acta Psychologica, 135, 278–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoheisel, B. and Kryspin-Exner, I. (2005). Emotionserkennung in Gesichtern und emotionales Gesichtergedachtnis: neuropsychologische Erkenntnisse und Darstellung von Einflussfaktoren [Emotion recognition and memory for emotional faces: neuropsychological findings and influencing factors]. Zeitschrift fur Neuropsychologie, 16, 77–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessen, F. et al. (2014). A conceptual framework for research on subjective cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer and Dementia, 10, 844–852.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, C. G., Bilker, W., Hagendoorn, M., Gur, R. E. and Gur, R. C. (2000). Emotion recognition deficit in schizophrenia: association with symptomatology and cognition. Biological Psychiatry, 48, 127–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kumfor, F. and Piguet, O. (2013). Emotion recognition in the dementias: brain correlates and patient implications. Neurodegenerative Disease Management, 3, 277–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumfor, F., Sapey-Triomphe, L.-A., Leyton, C. E., Burrell, J. R., Hodges, J. R. and Piguet, O. (2014). Degradation of emotion processing ability in corticobasal syndrome and Alzheimer's disease. Brain, 137, 3061–3072.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lehrl, S. and Fischer, B. (1997). Kurztest für cerebrale Insuffizienz (c.I. Test) [A short test for cerebral insufficiency (c.I. Test)]. Ebersberg, Germany: Vless.Google Scholar
Lehrner, J., Gleiss, A., Maly, J., Auff, E. and Dal-Bianco, P. (2006). Der verbale selektive reminding test (VSRT): ein Verfahren zur Überprüfung verbaler Gedächtnisfunktionen. Neuropsychiatrie, 20, 204–214.Google Scholar
McCade, D., Savage, G., Guastella, A., Hickie, I., Lewis, S. J. and Naismith, S. L. (2013). Emotion recognition in Mild Cognitive Impairment: relationship to psychosocial disability and caregiver burden. Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, 26, 165–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCade, D., Savage, G. and Naismith, S. L. (2011). Review of emotion recognition in mild cognitive impairment. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 32, 257–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, J. C. et al. (1989). The consortium to establish a registry for Alzheimer's disease (CERAD): part 1. Clinical and neuropsychological assessment of Alzheimer's disease. Neurology, 39, 1159–1165.Google Scholar
Oswald, W. D. and Fleischmann, U. M. (1997). Das Nürnberger-Alters-Inventar [Nürnberger Geriatric Inventory]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Petersen, R. C. and Negash, S. (2008). Mild cognitive impairment: an overview. CNS Spectrum, 3, 45–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pusswald, G. et al. (2013). Prevalence of mild cognitive impairment subtypes in patients attending a memory outpatient clinic–comparison of two modes of mild cognitive impairment classification: results of the Vienna conversion to dementia study. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 9, 366–376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
R Development Core Team (2014). R: a language and environment for statistical computing (Version 3.1.1) [Computer software]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Regard, M., Strauss, E. and Knapp, P. (1982). Children's production on verbal and non-verbal fluency tasks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 55, 839–844.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reitan, R. (1979). Trail Making Test (TMT). Tucson, AZ: Reitan Neuropsychology Laboratory.Google Scholar
Sun, Y., Yang, F.-C., Lin, C.-P. and Han, Y. (2015). Biochemical and neuroimaging studies in subjective cognitive decline: progress and perspectives. CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics, in press. doi:10.1111/cns.12395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, K.-H. and Metzler, P. (1992). Wortschatztest (WST): Ein Rasch-skalierter Test zur Abschätzung der verbalen Intelligenz [Vocabulary test (WST): a Rasch-calibrated test for assessment of verbal intelligence]. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz.Google Scholar
Snowden, J. S., Austin, N. A., Sembi, S., Thompson, J. C., Craufurd, D. and Neary, D. (2008). Emotion recognition in Huntington's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2638–2649.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, S. and Ruffman, T. (2004). Emotion recognition deficits in the elderly. International Journal of Neuroscience, 114, 403–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tewes, U. (1994). Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenztest für Erwachsene-Revision 1991 (HAWIE-R) [The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised 1991 (HAWIE-R)]. Bern, Switzerland: Huber.Google Scholar
Vandekerckhove, M. et al. (2014). Impaired facial emotion recognition in patients with ventromedial prefrontal hypoperfusion. Neuropsychology, 28, 605–612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vos, S. J. B. et al. (2013). Prediction of Alzheimer disease in subjects with amnestic and nonamnestic MCI. Neurology, 80, 1124–1132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed