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Abstract:
The selective deficit of recognition of disgust expression in
Huntington's disease (HD) and HD gene carrier strongly suggested
the possibility that basal ganglia is involved in disgust
processing. To further test this hypothesis, we test the perception
of emotional expressions in patients with symptomatic Wilson's
disease (WD) , another basal ganglia disease resulted from abnormal
copper metabolism.
Methods: We developed a six basic emotional morphed face
continuum (30 morphed emotional faces across
happy-surprise-fear-sad-disgust-anger-happy). Participants were
required to label each of these morphs in 5 trails to measure the
ability of different emotion processing. The performances of 32
cases of WD were compared with 20 age- and education- matched
normal controls.
Result: On the group level, although significantly impaired in
fear, disgust and anger (P <0.05; P <0.001; P <0.05
respectively), WD manifested deferentially severe deficit in
disgust processing (score in disgust significantly worse than that
of fear and anger P's < 0.001).
Conclusion: the differentially severe deficit of disgust in WD
supported that basal ganglia play important role on disgust
processing. Combined with selectively deficit of fear processing in
cases with bilateral amygdala or bilateral cingulate gyrus lesions,
the result here represented the double dissociation, which in turn
strongly suggested that certain different basic emotion may have
distinct neural substrate.
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