Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus Selectively Modulates Emotion Recognition of Facial Stimuli in Parkinson’s Patients

Background: Diminished emotion recognition is a known symptom in Parkinson (PD) patients and subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) has been shown to further deteriorate the processing of especially negative emotions. While emotion recognition generally refers to both, implicit and explicit processing, demonstrations of DBS-influences on implicit processing are sparse. In the present study, we assessed the impact of STN-DBS on explicit and implicit processing for emotional stimuli. Methods: Under STN-DBS ON and OFF, fourteen PD patients performed an implicit as well as an explicit emotional processing task. To assess implicit emotional processing, patients were tested with a lexical decision task (LTD) combined with an affective priming paradigm, which provides emotional content through the facial eye region. To assess explicit emotional processing, patients additionally explicitly rated the emotional status of eyes and words used in the implicit task. Results: DBS affected explicit emotional processing more than implicit processing with a more pronounced effect on error rates than on reaction speed. STN-DBS generally worsened implicit and explicit processing for disgust stimulus material but improved explicit processing of fear stimuli. Conclusions: This is the first study demonstrating influences of STN-DBS on explicit and implicit emotion processing in PD patients. While STN stimulation impeded the processing of disgust stimuli, it improved explicit discrimination of fear stimuli.