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

José Cárdenas, María J. Blanca, Fernando Carvajal, Sandra Rubio and Carmen Pedraza
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José Cárdenas: Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Malaga, Campus Universitario de Teatinos, s/n, 29071 Malaga, Spain
María J. Blanca: Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Malaga, Campus Universitario de Teatinos, s/n, 29071 Malaga, Spain
Fernando Carvajal: Department of Biological Psychology and Health, Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid Calle Ivan Pavlov, 6, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Sandra Rubio: Department of Biological Psychology and Health, Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid Calle Ivan Pavlov, 6, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Carmen Pedraza: Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Malaga, Campus Universitario de Teatinos, s/n, 29071 Malaga, Spain

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: emotional processing assessment; diagnosis; mild cognitive impairment; Alzheimer’s disease (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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