Lack of Impairment of Facial Expression Recognition among Individuals with Parkinson Disease

ABSTRACT: Among the non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, impairment in the recognition of emotional facial expressions has been widely discussed, as the disease may affect brain areas related to this skill. The current study has investigated, among elderly people, the recognition of the six emotional face expressions considered universal using the instrument Test of Emotional Perception of Faces, where participants performed an emotional facial recognition task. Forty-one participants with an average age of 64.9 years were enrolled to this study, 27 men and 14 women. No significant impairment in the recognition of emotional face expression was observed among the parkinsonians. This result may indicate the need to develop more adequate tools and techniques able to investigate this issue in the Brazilian population.