Emotional Processing in Healthy Ageing, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease

Bibliographic Data

ID15465606
AuthorsJosé Cardenas (0000-0002-8141-9086, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Malaga, Campus Universitario de Teatinos, s/n, 29071 Malaga, Spain), José A Cárdenas (0000-0002-4978-4980, Universidad de Málaga), Maria J Blanca (0000-0003-4046-9308, Universidad de Málaga), Fernando Carvajal (0000-0003-0726-4298, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Sandra Rubio (0000-0003-3157-6814, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, corresponding author), Carmen Pedraza (0000-0002-0011-2817, Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Málaga, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume18
Issue5
Pages2770-2770
Publication date2021-03-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1661-7827 • E-ISSN: 1660-4601
PublisherMultidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3390/ijerph18052770
PMID33803344
OpenAlexW3135036514
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited64

Emotional processing, particularly facial expression recognition, is essential for social cognition, and dysfunction may be associated with poor cognitive health. In pathological ageing conditions, such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), in which cognitive impairments are present, disturbed emotional processing and difficulty with social interactions have been documented. However, it is unclear how pathological ageing affects emotional processing and human social behaviour. The aim of this study is to provide insight into how emotional processing is affected in MCI and AD and whether this capacity can constitute a differentiating factor allowing the preclinical diagnosis of both diseases. For this purpose, an ecological emotional battery adapted from five subsets of the Florida Affect Battery was used. Given that emotion may not be separated from cognition, the affect battery was divided into subtests according to cognitive demand, resulting in three blocks. Our results showed that individuals with MCI or AD had poorer performance on the emotional processing tasks, although with different patterns, than that of controls. Cognitive demand may be responsible for the execution patterns of different emotional processing tests. Tasks with moderate cognitive demand are the most sensitive for discriminating between two cognitive impairment entities. In summary, emotional processing tasks may aid in characterising the neurocognitive deficits in MCI or AD. Additionally, identifying these deficits may be useful for developing interventions that specifically target these emotional processing problems

Affect (linguistics · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Disease · Emotional expression · Neurocognitive · Pathological · Pathology · Communication · Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research · Functional Brain Connectivity Studies · Medicine · Memory and Neural Mechanisms · Neuroscience · Psychology

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