Objective: While Parkinson�s disease (PD) has traditionally been described as a movement disorder, there is\ngrowing evidence of disruption in emotion information processing associated with the disease. The aim of this\nstudy was to investigate whether there are specific electroencephalographic (EEG) characteristics that discriminate\nPD patients and normal controls during emotion information processing.\nMethod: EEG recordings from 14 scalp sites were collected from 20 PD patients and 30 age-matched normal\ncontrols. Multimodal (audio-visual) stimuli were presented to evoke specific targeted emotional states such as\nhappiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. Absolute and relative power, frequency and asymmetry\nmeasures derived from spectrally analyzed EEGs were subjected to repeated ANOVA measures for group\ncomparisons as well as to discriminate function analysis to examine their utility as classification indices. In addition,\nsubjective ratings were obtained for the used emotional stimuli.\nResults: Behaviorally, PD patients showed no impairments in emotion recognition as measured by subjective\nratings. Compared with normal controls, PD patients evidenced smaller overall relative delta, theta, alpha and beta\npower, and at bilateral anterior regions smaller absolute theta, alpha, and beta power and higher mean total\nspectrum frequency across different emotional states. Inter-hemispheric theta, alpha, and beta power asymmetry\nindex differences were noted, with controls exhibiting greater right than left hemisphere activation. Whereas\nintra-hemispheric alpha power asymmetry reduction was exhibited in patients bilaterally at all regions. Discriminant\nanalysis correctly classified 95.0% of the patients and controls during emotional stimuli.\nConclusion: These distributed spectral powers in different frequency bands might provide meaningful information\nabout emotional processing in PD patients.
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