Social Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is typically well recognized by its characteristic motor symptoms (e.g., bradykinesia, rigidity, and tremor). The cognitive symptoms of PD are increasingly being acknowledged by clinicians and researchers alike. However, PD also involves a host of emotional and communicative changes which can cause major disruptions to social functioning. These incude problems producing emotional facial expressions (i.e., facial masking) and emotional speech (i.e., dysarthria), as well as difficulties recognizing the verbal and nonverbal emotional cues of others. These social symptoms of PD can result in severe negative social consequences, including stigma, dehumanization, and loneliness, which might affect quality of life to an even greater extent than more well-recognized motor or cognitive symptoms. It is, therefore, imperative that researchers and clinicans become aware of these potential social symptoms and their negative effects, in order to properly investigate and manage the socioemotional aspects of PD. This narrative review provides an examination of the current research surrounding some of the most common social symptoms of PD and their related social consequences and argues that proactively and adequately addressing these issues might improve disease outcomes.

The Impact of Sex on the Neurocognitive Functions of Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

“…Our findings suggest that the cognitive flexibility of executive function and visuospatial ability are the susceptible cognitive domains in female patients with PD and have a higher risk of being damaged, which may result from the loss of estrogen protection. Moreover, growing evidence has also shown the development of a host of socioaffective troubles in addition to neurocognitive dysfunctions in the disease course of PD [39]. Our previous study also found susceptibility to social cognition in female patients with PD [40].…”

Effectiveness of Occupational Therapy Intervention in Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease- A Case Report

“…She had characteristic Parkinsonian gait. She was not able to express non-verbally through facial expressions due to masked face 5 . She was in stage 3 of Hoehn and Yahr scale for classification of PD which suggested bilateral involvement with postural instability but independent…”

Action and emotion perception in Parkinson’s disease: A neuroimaging meta-analysis

“…Social perception is one of the main social abilities affected in patients with PD ( Buxton et al, 2013 ), particularly for what concerns action observation ( Agosta et al, 2017 ), face perception ( Cardoso et al, 2010 ), and emotion recognition ( Argaud et al, 2018 ). These social anomalies may lead to a wide range of negative outcomes, such as loneliness, stigma, and dehumanization, which might impair the patient’s life more than other symptoms ( Prenger et al, 2020 ). Despite this evidence, the neural substrates of social perception deficits in PD remain to be clarified ( Bell et al, 2019 ).…”