Selective Impairment of Processing Task-Irrelevant Emotional Faces in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Patients

Abstract

Zhongyu Fan,1– 4,* Yunliang Guo,1– 3,* Xunyao Hou,1– 3 Renjun Lv,5 Shanjing Nie,1– 3 Song Xu,1– 3 Jian Chen,1– 3 Yan Hong,1– 3 Shuo Zhao,6 Xueping Liu1– 3 1Department of Geriatrics, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 3Anti-Aging Monitoring Laboratory, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 4Shandong Provincial Hospital, Shandong First Medical University & Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 5The First School of Clinical Medicine, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Radiology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xueping LiuDepartment of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail [email protected]: Few reports have implied electrophysiological alterations and neurocognitive abnormalities in patients with cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD), while no investigation is available regarding emotional processing. In the present study, pre-attentive processing of facial expressions was compared between CSVD sufferers and healthy controls using expression-related visual mismatch negativity (EMMN) as the indicator.Methods: A total of 22 CSVD patients (12 males) and 21 age-matched healthy controls (12 males) were recruited for neuropsychological and emotional assessments, as well as electroencephalogram recording and analysis. We employed an expression-related oddball paradigm to investigate automatic emotional processing, and a series of schematic emotional faces (neutral, happy, sad) unrelated to subject’s task were present in the test to avoid low-level processing of facial features.Results: Although the distinctions of neuropsychological (MoCA and MMSE), emotional (GAD-7 and PHQ-9) and behavioral parameters (reaction time to target stimuli and response accuracy) did not reach significant levels, mean amplitudes of sad EMMN in time intervals of 150– 250 ms and 250– 350 ms were remarkably reduced in CSVD patients compared with healthy controls, but not for happy EMMN. Furthermore, in the control group, sad EMMN was demonstrated to be larger (more negative) than happy EMMN, while this interesting phenomenon disappeared in the CSVD group.Conclusion: Our findings confirmed selective impairment of processing expressions which were task-irrelevant in CSVD patients, without the existence of negative bias (sad superiority) effect. The efficacy of EMMN as an electrophysiological evaluation marker of CSVD should be taken into account in future investigations.Keywords: cerebral small vessel disease, expression-related visual mismatch negativity, pre-attentive processing of facial expressions, negative bias effect

Keywords

• cerebral small vessel disease
• expression-related visual mismatch negativity
• pre-attentive processing of facial expressions
• negative bias effect