Understanding the role of configural processing in face emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease

This investigation examined whether impairment in configural processing could explain deficits in face emotion recognition in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Stimuli from the Radboud Faces Database were used to compare recognition of four negative emotion expressions by older adults with PD (n = 16) and matched controls (n = 17). Participants were tasked with categorizing emotional expressions from upright and inverted whole faces and facial composites; it is difficult to derive configural information from these two types of stimuli so featural processing should play a larger than usual role in accurate recognition of emotional expressions. We found that the PD group were impaired relative to controls in recognizing anger, disgust and fearful expressions in upright faces. Then, consistent with a configural processing deficit, participants with PD showed no composite effect when attempting to identify facial expressions of anger, disgust and fear. A face inversion effect, however, was observed in the performance of all participants in both the whole faces and facial composites tasks. These findings can be explained in terms of a configural processing deficit if it is assumed that the disruption caused by facial composites was specific to configural processing, whereas inversion reduced performance by making it difficult to derive both featural and configural information from faces.     

Impulse Control Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease: A Psychosocial Perspective

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease primarily characterised by motor symptoms. However, another feature of PD which is receiving increasing attention is the phenomenon of impulse control disorders (ICDs), such as pathological gambling. To date, research into ICDs in PD has centred on a biomedical model of cause, related to the effects of dopamine replacement therapy. However, there are several areas of discrepancy in the current biomedical account of ICDs in PD. In addition, we argue that social and psychological factors also need to be considered to achieve a more complete understanding of the phenomenon. We present a novel conceptual model which combines biomedical and psychosocial factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD and use the model to identify a number of potential treatment intervention points and to highlight important outstanding questions concerning the inter-relationship between psychosocial and biomedical factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD.     

Postural control after unexpected external perturbation: Effects of Parkinson’s disease subtype

Different clinical subtypes of Parkinson’s disease (PD) have long been recognized. Recent studies have focused on two PD subtypes: Postural Instability and Gait Difficulty (PIGD) and Tremor Dominant (TD). PIGD patients have greater difficulties in postural control in relation to TD. However, knowledge about the differences in reactive adjustment mechanisms following a perturbation in TD and PIGD is limited. This study aimed to compare reactive postural adjustments under unexpected external perturbation in TD, PIGD, and control group (CG) subjects. Forty-five individuals (15 TD, 15 PIGD, and 15 CG) participated in this study. Postural perturbation was applied by the posterior displacement of the support surface in an unexpected condition. The velocity (15 cm/s) and displacement (5 cm/s) of perturbation were the same for all participants. Center of pressure (CoP) and center of mass (CoM) were analyzed for two reactive windows after the perturbation (0–200 ms and 200–700 ms). The Bonferroni post hoc test indicated a higher range of CoP in the PIGD when compared to the CG (p = 0.021). The PIGD demonstrated greater time to recover the stable posture compared to the TD (p = 0.017) and CG (p = 0.003). Furthermore, the TD showed higher AP-acceleration peak of CoM when compared to the PIGD (p = 0.048) and CG (p = 0.013), and greater AP-acceleration range of CoM in relation to the CG (p = 0.022). These findings suggest that PD patients present worse reactive postural control after perturbation compared to healthy older individuals. CoP and CoM parameters are sensitive to understand and detect the differences in reactive postural mechanisms in PD subtypes.     

The role of rapport in satisfying one’s basic psychological needs

Psychological need satisfaction is essential for daily human functioning and one of its sources is high quality interactions. Rapport is essential to high quality interactions and may be one way that various relationships types can provide the nutriments of healthy functioning. We hypothesized that when people perceive interactions to be higher in rapport, they will experience greater satisfaction of their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We also explored whether this would be a basic process that would be altered by the relationship between interactants, testing this with multiple operationalizations. We conducted an event-contingent diary study in which participants (n_participants?=?124) responded to items at baseline, each time they experienced an interaction (n_interaction?=?1293), and at two-week follow-up. Supporting hypotheses, rapport in interactions was positively associated with need satisfaction within-persons, between-persons, cross-sectionally, and when examining temporal change. Moreover, rapport tended to predict the satisfaction of one’s needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness independently. Finally, relationships between interactants did not moderate these associations.

     

Theory of mind and joint action in Parkinson’s disease

It has been suggested that the Theory of Mind (ToM) may rely on more basic processes of social cognition, such as action control (e.g., joint action), even if little is known about this relationship. The relationship between ToM and joint action can be studied in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), because they are characterized not only by a deficit in ToM (and in its cognitive and affective subcomponents) but also by a deficit in the inhibition of competing responses. Sixty PD patients and 60 matched healthy controls (HCs) performed a go/no-go Flanker task in both joint and individual conditions. Cognitive (Advanced Test or AT) and affective (Emotion Attribution Task or EAT) ToM also were measured. Thirty-five PD patients and matched HCs also performed the standard Flanker task, as a control measure. In patients, only individuals with high AT scores exhibited a joint Flanker effect, whereas in HCs the joint effect was found irrespectively of AT score. Patients with low EAT scores showed a greater interference effect than patients with high scores, whereas the opposite pattern was found for HCs. In regression analysis AT and EAT scores predicted the Flanker effect in the joint condition only. In the standard task, both groups showed a Flanker effect. The role of different fronto-striatal circuits, especially in PD patients, could explain the different involvement of cognitive and affective ToM in joint tasks. The Flanker effect is discussed considering the referential coding account and the attention-focus account as possible candidates to explain joint action effects.     

The role of parents’ autonomy support and psychological control in sibling relationship functioning through children’s need-based experiences

This study aimed to examine whether parents’ autonomy support and psychological control during sibling conflict would relate to children’s need-based experiences and relationship functioning within the sibling relationship. Two siblings (M_age = 8.61 years, SD = 0.91 and M_age = 10.50 years, SD = 0.94) of 205 families filled out questionnaires. Results showed that parental autonomy support related positively to siblings’ relationship satisfaction via children’s need satisfaction. Additionally, fathers’ psychological control related negatively to provided autonomy support and positively to provided psychological control from one sibling to the other (as reported by the other sibling) and negatively to satisfaction with this relationship via need frustration. These findings highlight the importance of the quality of parents’ involvement during sibling conflict.     

Dysexecutive syndrome in Parkinson’s disease: the GREFEX study

The objectives of this study were to characterize the frequencies and profiles of behavioral and cognitive dysexecutive syndromes in PD (based on validated battery and diagnostic criteria) and to develop a shortened diagnostic battery. Eighty-eight non-demented patients with a diagnosis of PD were examined with an executive validated battery. Using a validated framework, the patients’ test results were interpreted with respect to normative data from 780 controls. A dysexecutive syndrome was observed in 80.6% of the patients [95% confidence interval: 71.1–90.1]. The dysexecutive profile was characterized by prominent impairments in deduction, flexibility, inhibition and initiation in the cognitive domain, and by global hypoactivity with apathy and hyperactivity in the behavioral domain. This finding implies that patients with PD should be assessed with cognitive tests and a validated inventory for behavioral dysexecutive syndromes. A shortened battery (based on three cognitive tests and three behavioral domains) provided high diagnostic accuracy.     

Processing emotional tone from speech in Parkinson’s disease: A role for the basal ganglia

In this study, individuals with Parkinson's disease were tested as a model for basal ganglia dysfunction to infer how these structures contribute to the processing of emotional speech tone (emotional prosody). Nondemented individuals with and without Parkinson's disease (n = 21/group) completed neuropsychological tests and tasks that required them to process the meaning of emotional prosody in various ways (discrimination, identification, emotional feature rating). Individuals with basal ganglia disease exhibited abnormally reduced sensitivity to the emotional significance of prosody in a range of contexts, a deficit that could not be attributed to changes in mood, emotional-symbolic processing, or estimated frontal lobe cognitive resource limitations in most conditions. On the basis of these and broader findings in the literature, it is argued that the basal ganglia provide a critical mechanism for reinforcing the behavioral significance of prosodic patterns and other temporal representations derived from cue sequences (Lieberman, 2000), facilitating cortical elaboration of these events.     

Working memory in healthy aging and in Parkinson’s disease: evidence of interference effects

Focusing on relevant information while suppressing the irrelevant one are critical abilities for different cognitive processes. However, their functioning has been scarcely investigated in the working memory (WM) domain, in both healthy and pathological conditions. The present research aimed to study these abilities in aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD), testing three groups of healthy participants (young, older and elderly) and one of PD patients, employing a new experimental paradigm. Results showed that the transient storing of irrelevant information in WM causes substantial interference effects, which were remarkable in elderly individuals on both response latency and accuracy. Interestingly, PD patients responded faster and were equally accurate compared to a matched control group. Taken together, findings confirm the existence of similar mechanisms for orienting attention inwards to WM contents or outwards to perceptual stimuli, and suggest the suitability of our task to assess WM functioning in both healthy aging and PD.     

Self-unawareness of levodopa induced dyskinesias in patients with Parkinson’s disease

The study analyzes the presence of dyskinesias-reduced-self-awareness in forty-eight patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease (PD). As the association with executive dysfunction is a matter of debate and we hypothesize it plays an important role in dyskinesias self-unawareness, we analyzed the role of dopaminergic treatment on the medial-prefrontal-ventral-striatal circuitry using a neurocognitive approach. Special attention was given to metacognitive abilities related to action-monitoring that represent a novel explanation of the phenomenon.PD patients were assessed using different rating scales that we devised to measure movement awareness disorders. In order to ascertain whether each variable measured at a cognitive-clinical level contributes to predicting the scores of the movement-disorder-awareness-scales, we conducted multiple logistic regression models using the latter as binary dependent variables. We used the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test-metacognitive-version to assess the executive functions of the prefrontal-ventral-striatal circuitry.Data showed that a reduction of self-awareness using the Dyskinesia rating scale was associated with global monitoring (p = .04), monitoring resolution (p = .04) and control sensitivity (p = .04). Patients failed to perceive their performance, distinguish between correct and incorrect sorts, be confident in their choice and consequently decide to gamble during the task.We did not find any association with executive functions using the hypo-bradykinesia rating scale.Our findings indicate that when the comparator mechanism for monitoring attentive performance is compromised at a prefrontal striatal level, patients lose the ability to recognize their motor disturbances that do not achieve conscious awareness.     

Horizontal and vertical attentional orienting in Parkinson’s disease

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) typically suffer from an asymmetric degeneration of dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra, resulting in right-sided (RPD) or left-sided (LPD) predominance of motor symptomatology. As the dopaminergic system is also involved in attention, we examined horizontal and vertical orienting of attention in LPD (N = 10), RPD (N = 9) and controls (N = 10). Four LPD patients demonstrated left neglect and three LPD patients demonstrated neglect for the upper visual field. LPD patients demonstrated a slower performance in detecting targets in the left hemifield and did not demonstrate a validity effect, unlike RPD patients and controls. RPD patients performed similar to controls, with the exception of one patient showing left and another showing right neglect, and two RPD patients demonstrated lower neglect. In sum, horizontal and vertical orienting of attention can be affected in Parkinson’s disease – particularly in LPD – from very subtle slowing to clinically detectable horizontal and/or vertical neglect.     

Effects of disease severity and medication state on postural control asymmetry during challenging postural tasks in individuals with Parkinson’s disease

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of disease severity and medication state on postural control asymmetry during challenging tasks in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Nineteen people with PD and 11 neurologically healthy individuals performed three standing task conditions: bipedal standing, tandem and unipedal adapted standing; the individuals with PD performed the tasks in ON and OFF medication state. The participants with PD were distributed into 2 groups according to disease severity: unilateral group (n = 8) and bilateral group (n = 11). The two PD groups performed the evaluations both under and without the medication. Two force plates were used to analyze the posture. The symmetric index was calculated for various of center of pressure. ANOVA one-way (groups) and two-way (PD groups × medication), with repeated measures for medication, were calculated. For main effects of group, the bilateral group was more asymmetric than CG. For main effects of medication, only unipedal adapted standing presented effects of PD medication. There was PD groups × medication interaction. Under the effects of medication, the unilateral group presented lower asymmetry of RMS in anterior–posterior direction and area than the bilateral group in unipedal adapted standing. In addition, the unilateral group presented lower asymmetry of mean velocity, RMS in anterior–posterior direction and area in unipedal standing and area in tandem adapted standing after a medication dose. Postural control asymmetry during challenging postural tasks was dependent on disease severity and medication state in people with PD. The bilateral group presented higher postural control asymmetry than the control and unilateral groups in challenging postural tasks. Finally, the medication dose was able to reduce postural control asymmetry in the unilateral group during challenging postural tasks.     

Optimized cuttlefish algorithm for diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease

This paper presents an optimized cuttlefish algorithm for feature selection based on the traditional cuttlefish algorithm, which can be used for diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at its early stage. Parkinson is a central nervous system disorder, caused due to the loss of brain cells. Parkinson's disease is incurable and could eventually lead to death but medications can help to control symptoms and elongate the patient's life to some extent. The proposed model uses the traditional cuttlefish algorithm as a search strategy to ascertain the optimal subset of features. The decision tree and k-nearest neighbor classifier as a judgment on the selected features. The Parkinson speech with multiple types of sound recordings and Parkinson Handwriting sample’s datasets are used to evaluate the proposed model. The proposed algorithm can be used in predicting the Parkinson’s disease with an accuracy of approximately 94% and help individual to have proper treatment at early stage. The experimental result reveals that the proposed bio-inspired algorithm finds an optimal subset of features, maximizing the accuracy, minimizing number of features selected and is more stable.     

Cognitive control and parsing: Reexamining the role of Broca’s area in sentence comprehension

A century of investigation into the role of the human frontal lobes in complex cognition, including language processing, has revealed several interesting but apparently contradictory findings. In particular, the results of numerous studies suggest that left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), which includes Broca’s area, plays a direct role in sentence-level syntactic processing. In contrast, other brain-imaging and neuropsychological data indicate that LIFG is crucial for cognitive control—specifically, for overriding highly regularized, automatic processes, even when a task involves syntactically undemanding material (e.g., single words, a list of letters). We provide a unifying account of these findings, which emphasizes the importance of general cognitive control mechanisms for the syntactic processing of sentences. On the basis of a review of the neurocognitive and sentence-processing literatures, we defend the following three hypotheses: (1) LIFG is part of a network of frontal lobe subsystems that are generally responsible for the detection and resolution of incompatible stimulus representations; (2) the role of LIFG in sentence comprehension is to implement reanalysis in the face of misinterpretation; and (3) individual differences in cognitive control abilities in nonsyntactic tasks predict correlated variation in sentence-processing abilities pertaining to the recovery from misinterpretation.     

Targeted training of the decision rule benefits rule-guided behavior in Parkinson’s disease

The impact of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on rule-guided behavior has received considerable attention in cognitive neuroscience. The majority of research has used PD as a model of dysfunction in frontostriatal networks, but very few attempts have been made to investigate the possibility of adapting common experimental techniques in an effort to identify the conditions that are most likely to facilitate successful performance. The present study investigated a targeted training paradigm designed to facilitate rule learning and application using rule-based categorization as a model task. Participants received targeted training in which there was no selective-attention demand (i.e., stimuli varied along a single, relevant dimension) or nontargeted training in which there was selective-attention demand (i.e., stimuli varied along a relevant dimension as well as an irrelevant dimension). Following training, all participants were tested on a rule-based task with selective-attention demand. During the test phase, PD patients who received targeted training performed similarly to control participants and outperformed patients who did not receive targeted training. As a preliminary test of the generalizability of the benefit of targeted training, a subset of the PD patients were tested on the Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST). PD patients who received targeted training outperformed PD patients who did not receive targeted training on several WCST performance measures. These data further characterize the contribution of frontostriatal circuitry to rule-guided behavior. Importantly, these data also suggest that PD patient impairment, on selective-attention-demanding tasks of rule-guided behavior, is not inevitable and highlight the potential benefit of targeted training.     

Subjective states associated with retrieval failures in Parkinson’s disease

Instances in which we cannot retrieve information immediately but know that the information might be retrieved later are subjective states that accompany retrieval failure. These are expressed in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences. In Experiment 1, participants with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and older adult controls were given general questions and asked to report when they experienced a TOT state and to give related information about the missing word. The PD group experienced similar levels of TOTs but provided less correct peripheral information related to the target when in a TOT state. In Experiment 2, participants were given a Semantic (general knowledge questions) and an Episodic (word pairs) FOK task. PD patients failed to accurately predict their future memory performance (FOK) in response to both episodic and semantic cues. Results are interpreted in the context of recent frameworks of memory and metacognition.     

The nature of working memory gating in Parkinson’s disease: A multi-domain signal detection examination

Distractions are ubiquitous; our brains are inundated with task-irrelevant information. Thus, to remember successfully, one must actively maintain relevant information and prevent distraction from entering working memory. Researchers suggest the basal ganglia-prefrontal pathways are vital to this process by acting as a working memory gate. Using Parkinson’s disease as a model of frontostriatal functioning and with signal detection analyses, the present study aims to better characterize the contribution of frontostriatal pathways of this gating process and to determine how it operates across multiple domains. To achieve this, Parkinson’s disease patients and healthy controls completed verbal and spatial working memory tasks consisting of three conditions: low-load without distraction; low-load with distraction; and high-load without distraction. Patients were tested both ON and OFF dopaminergic medication, allowing for assessment of the contribution of dorsal and ventral frontostriatal pathways. The results demonstrate that when medication is withheld, Parkinson’s patients have a response bias to answer “NO” across all conditions and domains, supporting our hypothesis that the basal ganglia-prefrontal pathways allow or prevent updates of working memory. Contrastingly, medication status affects d′ in the distraction condition but not in the high- or low-load conditions. We attribute this to stimulus valuation processes that were impaired by dopaminergic medication overdosing the ventral pathway. These findings are both consistent with the hypothesis that the working memory gate filters spatial and verbal information before it enters into the working memory system, adding support for the gate being a domain-general mechanism of the central executive.     

Diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease using modified grey wolf optimization

This paper presents the Modified Grey Wolf Optimization (MGWO) algorithm which helps with the identification of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease at a premature stage. Parkinson disease is kind of a movement malady, which if not cured timely can prove to be fatal.Thus it becomes significant to identify Parkinson’s disease at its premature phase so proper medications can provide longevity to patient by controlling the symptoms. In this work, a new model named Modified Grey Wolf Optimization (MGWO) has been proposed grounded on the traditional Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), which acts as a search strategy for feature selection. GWO is a meta-heuristic algorithm which is enthused by hunt down behavior of wolves. Random forest, k-nearest neighbor classifier and decision tree espy on selected features. The proposed model is evaluated using various types of datasets of voice, handwriting (spiral and meander) and speech. The put forward algorithm helps in the prediction of Parkinson disease with an estimated accuracy of 94.83%, detection rate of 98.28%, false alarm rate of 16.03% and further aid the individuals to receive a functional treatment at an early stage. The proposed bio-inspired algorithm is stable enough to find out the optimal subset of features. At last the results derived from the evaluation of proposed algorithm on datasets are compared with the results of Optimized Cuttlefish Algorithm (OCFA). The experimental results depict that the proposed algorithm helps in maximizing the accurateness and minimizing the number of features selected.     

Postural control,falls and Parkinson’s disease: Are fallers more asymmetric than non-fallers?

Postural control asymmetry is an important aspect of Parkinson’s disease (PD) that may be associated with falls. The aim of this study was to compare the postural control asymmetry during postural tasks between fallers and non-fallers in people with PD and neurological healthy age-matched controls (CG). Individuals with idiopathic PD (n = 24) and CG (n = 24) were sub-divided into groups of fallers and non-fallers based on their fall history over the past year. Participants performed blocks of three 30-s trials of quiet standing with feet in a side-by-side and semi-tandem stance position. The center of pressure parameters for each limb were measured and used to calculate the symmetry index. Fallers compared to non-fallers had decreased asymmetry of vertical force in the side-by-side condition. During the tandem-front leg condition, PD non-fallers increased asymmetry of the medial-lateral velocity of sway compared to CG non-fallers. In addition, for the tandem–back leg condition, PD non-fallers increased asymmetry of total displacement and medial-lateral root mean square and mean velocity of sway compared to PD fallers. The results of the study did not support the hypothesis that PD fallers are more asymmetric than PD non-fallers. On the contrary, our results indicated that PD non-fallers had higher postural control asymmetry, especially during the more challenging (semi-tandem standing) postural task.