Re: Parkinson's impairs emotional communicaton and one treatment may m ake that worse

["ljherman1@xxxxxxxx" <ljherman1@xxxxxxxx>]

I can't help but wonder if they are making this too complicated. Sure, as my PD 
progresses, I feel more uncomfortable in social situations. I don't thinnk i am 
reading peoples'  emotions wrong, but  I worry about getting a dyskinesia 
attack in public, spilling my food in a restaurant,  or freezing in the middle 
of a crowded street. I have less and less contact with other people,  feel more 
isolated . Maybe this  makes communication more difficult when we are around 
people. like we're out-of-practice?


from the article:
"People with Parkinson?s disease often can?t differentiate between a sweet 
smile or an angry grimace, a warm welcome or a rude remark. And one of the 
major treatments may be making this worse, according to new research.

The debilitating movement disorder starts with tiny tremors and gradually 
seizes an individual?s ability to control movement, including speech. But it 
also often contributes to dementia, personality changes and other mental 
deficits, as countless doctors, researchers and families dealing with the 
disorder have documented. People with Parkinson?s disease often become socially 
withdrawn and uncomfortable.

This social uneasiness may stem from the decreased ability of Parkinson?s 
sufferers to understand other people?s emotions, according to a study published 
in the March issue of Neuropsychology.

?The idea here is that some of the brain regions that are impaired in 
Parkinson?s are also the brain regions that we use when we are interpreting 
emotion in other people, whether it be from the face of from the voice,? said 
lead author Heather Gray, psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School in 
Cambridge, Mass.

Gray explained that Parkinson?s disease affects the basil ganglia area, located 
at the base of the brain, which controls involuntary movement and emotion in 
the brain. The disease results in the loss of nerve cells that produce 
dopamine, the brain?s ?feel-good? chemical that also directs the function of 
muscles and movement.

?There are pathways in between the basal ganglia and other areas that are 
involved in emotion recognition, and so if you disrupt one part of the circuit 
there, you disrupt the whole thing,? Gray said. She added that difficulty in 
emotion recognition does not necessarily have to connect directly with areas 
impacted by Parkinson?s disease.

Gray collected data from 34 different studies with research specific to emotion 
recognition in people with Parkinson?s. ?From the studies, we extracted data on 
how well people in the two groups performed on these tasks, with the two groups 
being people with Parkinson?s and their matched control? without the disease, 
she said.

But a suc

---- Original Message ----------
From: rayilynlee <rayilynlee@xxxxxxx>
To: PARKINSN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Parkinson's impairs emotional communicaton and one treatment may make 
that worse
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 20:41:41 -0700

I disagree with this

Ray
Rayilyn Brown
Past Director AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation



From: Diane Wyshak 
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 12:21 PM
To: ray ; Dr. Kong 
Subject: Parkinson's impairs emotional communicaton and one treatment may make 
that worse



http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=159547 

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