The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Neural systems for recognizing emotion: studies of the patients with brain lesions
Language	J
AuthorList	Yayoi Kan¹⁾, Mitsuru Kawamura²⁾
Affiliation	1)Department of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-Ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan 2)Department of Neurology, Showa University School of Medicine
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 19 (3), 172-178, 2003
Received
Accepted
Abstract	Recognition of other people's emotion is very important for communication and social behavior. Here, we examined the brain areas associated with emotion recognition by studying the ability of recognition of emotion in patients who had brain dysfunctions; Parkinson's disease, bilateral amygdala damage, and depression. We used six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust) as stimulus categories and three types of emotional expressions (facial, prosodic, and written verbal stimuli) as stimulus modality. As for facial stimuli, in addition to static facial photographs, we used videotaped dynamic facial stimuli in order to show natural facial movement. Compared to controls, PD patients showed deficits in recognizing fear and disgust in facial expressions but behaved normally in recognizing emotion in prosodic and written verbal stimuli. The patient with bilateral amygdala damage showed deficits in recognizing fear in prosodic and written verbal stimuli but not in facial stimuli. Depressed patients tended to perceive surprise in prosodic stimuli as a more negative emotion but had correct recognition in facial and written verbal stimuli. These category- and modality-specific deficits in patients with different brain dysfunctions suggest that the distributed network of brain regions construct the neural substrates for recognizing emotion.
Keywords	Emotion recognition, Parkinson's disease, amygdala, depression