Recognition memory for emotional faces in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: An event-related potential study

Abstract

This study examined the temporal course of emotional face recognition in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Patients and healthy controls (HC) performed a face recognition task, giving old/new responses to previously studied and novel faces displaying a negative or neutral expression. In aMCI patients, recognition accuracy was preserved for negative faces. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed disease-related changes in early perceptual components but not in ERP indices of explicit recognition. Specifically, aMCI patients showed impaired recognition effects for negative faces on the amplitudes of N170 and P2, suggesting deficient memory-related processing of negative faces at the stage of structural encoding and during an early recognition stage at which faces are individuated, respectively. Moreover, while a right-lateralized emotion effect specifically observed for correctly recognized faces on the amplitude of N170 was absent in aMCI, a similar emotion effect for successfully recognized faces on P2 was preserved in the patients, albeit with a different distribution. This suggests that in aMCI facilitated processing of successfully recognized emotional faces starts later in the processing sequence. Nonetheless, an early frontal old/new effect confined to negative faces and a parietal old/new effect unaffected by facial emotion were observed in both groups. This indicates that familiarity and conceptual priming processes may specifically contribute to recognition of negative faces in older adults and that aMCI patients can recruit the same retrieval mechanisms as controls, despite disease-related changes on early perceptual ERP components.

Behavioral and neural correlates of visual emotion discrimination and empathy in mild cognitive impairment

“…Similarly, visual EEF was not found in AD patients [26,70,71], either in intentional or incidental encoding [72], while mixed findings are reported in MCI subjects. Some indicate the absence of EEF for both positive and negative facial expressions [22,73] but other studies found that EEF for angry facial expressions or emotionally positive scenes is spared [26,29]. A limitation of these studies is that they tested emotional recognition in only one category of stimuli and by means of short/long term memory paradigms, i.e.…”

“…Since MCI mainly affects the medial temporal and frontal structures normally involved in encoding emotional stimuli, a reduction in EEF would be expected. Nevertheless, neuroanatomical [25,26] and behavioural findings are still controversial [22,[27][28][29][30], possibly due to the different methodologies employed.…”

Individual differences in forced-choice recognition memory: Partitioning contributions of recollection and familiarity

“…was significantly impaired on a YN test for object pictures but performed at normal levels on a 4-alternative FCC test (Holdstock et al, 2002). This dissociation has been replicated in two groups of amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) patients (Westerberg et al, 2013; Westerberg et al, 2006), a group for whom there is growing evidence of impaired recollection and preserved familiarity, at least for visual stimuli (Anderson et al, 2008; Belleville, Ménard, & Lepage, 2011; Deason, Hussey, Budson, & Ally, 2012; Embree, Budson, & Ally, 2012; Hudon, Belleville, & Gauthier, 2009; O’Connor & Ally, 2010; Schefter et al, 2013; Serra et al, 2010). …”

The Role of Physical Fitness in the Neurocognitive Performance of Task Switching in Older Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment

“…For example, the ERP P2, N2, and P3 components are recognized as effective electrophysiological indices in the early stage of MCI diagnosis [20][21][22][23], as MCI subjects have prolonged P2, N2, and P3 latencies, and reduced P3 amplitudes, compared to healthy elderly controls [20,[24][25][26]. Even specific to the MCI subgroups [e.g., amnestic MCI (aMCI)], these ERP components may also be useful for observing the differences in cognitive processes from those of the healthy elderly [20,24,27,28], and to distinguish the different MCI subtypes (e.g., aMCI versus nonaMCI) [29]. ERP components may thus be sensitive enough to identify elderly patients with early cognitive decline or disease progression to MCI and/or AD.…”

“…Several reports over the past decade described the potential diagnostic importance of electrophysiological markers of cognitive decline in patients with MCI and the preclinical stage of AD, as obtained by analysis of the electroencephalography-derived event-related potentials (ERPs) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. For example, the ERP P2, N2, and P3 components are recognized as effective electrophysiological indices in the early stage of MCI diagnosis [20][21][22][23], as MCI subjects have prolonged P2, N2, and P3 latencies, and reduced P3 amplitudes, compared to healthy elderly controls [20,[24][25][26].…”