Reduced emotional mirroring in Parkinson Disease

Besides motor symptoms, Parkinson Disease (PD) is characterized by cognitive and affective impairments. For example, a facial emotion recognition deficit has often been reported (Grey & Tickle-Degnen, 2010). Neuroimaging studies suggest that perception and execution of emotional facial expressions are closely linked by mirror neurons in the pars opercularis and that the activation of these neurons during perception triggers intention understanding (Hennenlotter et al., 2005). The goal of our study was to examine the neural correlates of emotion processing in PD. Nine patients with PD and nine matched controls un…