Amygdala and emotionality in Parkinson's disease: An integrative review of the neuropsychological evidence.

Amygdala and emotionality in Parkinson's disease: An integrative review of the neuropsychological evidence. Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2018 May 19;39(2) Authors: Abstract Parkinson\'s disease (PD) is often accompanied by significant changes in emotionality, such as apathy, anhedonia, anxiety and depression. The present review summarizes the empirical evidence, including amygdala changes and psychological changes in emotionality in people suffering with PD. Seventeen empirical full-text articles including research on both amygdala and emotionality in PD were reviewed.The changes in amygdala volumes as well as changes in binding potentials, functional connectivity, regional homogeneity and regional cerebral blood flow were found to have various impacts on emotionality in people with PD. The integration of the results showed that some effects of amygdala changes on emotionality were lateralized. Some of the reviewed studies indicated that the volume loss in the left amygdala was found to be related to increased anxiety, whereas bilateral volume loss in amygdala was linked to increased depressivity. The reviewed results also support a hypothesis of bradylimbic affective disturbance in patients with PD. The disturbed activation of amygdala accompanying the evaluation of negative facial expressionsimplies that the evaluation of the content of affective stimuli in terms of their affective meanings is disturbed in PD patients. Impaired evaluatio...
Source: Neuroendocrinology Letters - Category: Endocrinology Tags: Neuro Endocrinol Lett Source Type: research