Deficits in Facial Emotion Processing in Mild Cognitive Impairment

• Published in: Dementia and geriatric cognitive disorders Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 271 - 279
• Main Authors: Teng, Edmond, Lu, Po H., Cummings, Jeffrey L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel, Switzerland Karger 01.01.2007; S. Karger AG
• Subjects: Aged; Analysis of Variance; Anesthesia. Intensive care medicine. Transfusions. Cell therapy and gene therapy; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition Disorders - diagnosis; Comprehension - physiology; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology; Emergency and intensive cardiocirculatory care. Cardiogenic shock. Coronary intensive care; Emotions; Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Intensive care medicine; Male; Matched-Pair Analysis; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Neurology; Neuropharmacology; Neuropsychological Tests; Nonverbal Communication; Original Research Article; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Pharmacology. Drug treatments; Psychoanaleptics: cns stimulant, antidepressant agent, nootropic agent, mood stabilizer..., (alzheimer disease); Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopharmacology; Reference Values; Regression Analysis; Severity of Illness Index; Social Perception; Facial expression processing; Nonverbal communication; Cognition disorders; Nervous system diseases; Cognitive disorder; Degenerative disease; Cognition; mild cognitive impairment; Emotion emotionality; Facial expression; Dementia
• ISSN: 1420-8008; 1421-9824
• DOI: 10.1159/000100829

Background: Patients with Alzheimer disease consistently demonstrate impaired performance on tests of facial emotion processing. However, it remains unclear how early in the neurodegenerative process these deficits emerge. Methods: We approached this question by examining facial emotional processing in a ‘pre-dementia’ condition, amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Nine single-domain amnestic MCI subjects, 14 multiple-domain amnestic MCI subjects (MCI-MD), and 68 normal control subjects were assessed with the Florida Affect Battery. Results: After adjustment for age and gender, analyses of performance across the facial affect processing subtests of the Florida Affect Battery demonstrated intact performance in the single-domain MCI group but significantly impaired performance in the MCI-MD group, particularly on a test of facial affect discrimination. Within the MCI-MD group, men performed disproportionately worse than women. Performance on facial affect discriminations in the MCI-MD group correlated most robustly with performance on tests of frontal/executive function. Conclusion: These data suggest that facial emotion processing can be impaired in MCI prior to the more marked cognitive deficits seen with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer disease.