The recognition of facial emotions is impaired following subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson's disease (PD). These changes have been linked to a disturbance in the STN's limbic territory, which is thought to be involved in emotional processing. This was confirmed by a recent PET study where these emotional modifications were correlated with changes in glucose metabolism in different brain regions, including the amygdala and the orbitofrontal regions that are well known for their involvement in emotional processing. Nevertheless, the question as to whether these emotional changes induced by STN DBS in PD are modality-specific has yet to be answered. The objective of this study was therefore to examine the effects of STN DBS in PD on the recognition of emotional prosody. An original emotional prosody paradigm was administered to twenty-one post-operative PD patients, twenty-one pre-operative PD patients and twenty-one matched controls. Results showed that both the pre- and post-operative groups differed from the healthy controls. There was also a significant difference between the pre and post groups. More specifically, an analysis of their continuous judgments revealed that the performance of the post-operative group compared with that of the other two groups was characterized by a systematic emotional bias whereby they perceived emotions more strongly. These results suggest that the impaired recognition of emotions may not be specific to the visual modality but may also be present when emotions are expressed through the human voice, implying the involvement of the STN in the brain network underlying the recognition of emotional prosody.
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