Neural correlates of impaired emotional face recognition in cerebellar lesions.
Clinical and neuroimaging data indicate a cerebellar contribution to emotional processing, which may account for affective-behavioral disturbances in patients with cerebellar lesions. We studied the neurophysiology of cerebellar involvement in recognition of emotional facial expression. Participants comprised eight patients with discrete ischemic cerebellar lesions and eight control patients without any cerebrovascular stroke. Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to measure responses to faces from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces Database (KDEF), interspersed in a stream of images with salient contents. Images of faces augmented N170 in both groups, but increased late positive potential (LPP) only in control patients without brain lesions. Dipole analysis revealed altered activation patterns for negative emotions in patients with cerebellar lesions, including activation of the left inferior prefrontal area to images of faces showing fear, contralateral to controls. Correlation analysis indicated that lesions of cerebellar area Crus I contribute to ERP deviations. Overall, our results implicate the cerebellum in integrating emotional information at different higher order stages, suggesting distinct cerebellar contributions to the proposed large-scale cerebral network of emotional face recognition.
Bavaria Hospital, Department of Clinical and Cognitive Rehabilitation, An der Wolfsschlucht 1-2, D-01731 Kreischa, Germany; Department of Neurology, University of Greifswald, Germany. Electronic address: michael.adamaszek@freenet.de.
Michael
M
Adamaszek
Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 27, Hobart 7001, Australia. Electronic address: ken.kirkby@utas.edu.au.
Kenneth C
KC
Kirkby
Department of Neuroscience, AOU San Giovanni Battista, Via Cherasco 15, 10126 Turin, Italy. Electronic address: federico.dagata@unito.it.
Fedrico
F
D'Agata
Department of Psychiatry, University of Leipzig, Semmelweissstraße 10, 04105 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: sebastian.olbrich@medizin.uni-leipzig.de.
Sebastian
S
Olbrich
Department of Neuroradiology, University of Greifswald, Ferdinand-Sauerbruch-Strasse, 17475 Greifswald, Germany. Electronic address: langner@medizin.uni-greifswald.de.
Sönke
S
Langner
Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstraße 1°, 04107 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: steele@cbs.mpg.de.
Christopher
C
Steele
Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstraße 1°, 04107 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: sehm@cbs.mpg.de.
Bernhard
B
Sehm
Department of Psychiatry, University of Magdeburg, Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. Electronic address: stefan.busse@med.ovgu.de.
Stefan
S
Busse
Department of Neurology, University of Greifswald, Germany. Electronic address: Kessler@neurologie.uni-greifswald.de.
Christof
C
Kessler
Institute of Physiological and Clinical Psychology, University of Greifswald, Franz-Mehring-Strasse, 17475 Greifswald, Germany. Electronic address: hamm@uni-greifswald.de.
Alfons
A
Hamm
D000368:Aged; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged
Cerebellum; ERP; Emotional facial expressions; Prefrontal cortex