The impact of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus on facial emotion recognition in patients with Parkinson's disease

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is successful in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) but may worsen cognitive outcome, including facial emotion recognition (FER). Data-analyses on 59 consecutive PD patients with complete pre- and postoperative assessments, using a sensitive FER test, showed no changes in FER 1 year after STN-DBS surgery, both after group and individual analyses. These findings do however not exclude the impact of FER in and on itself on the outcome after STN-DBS.

Automated summary

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus in patients with Parkinson's disease may not affect facial emotion recognition 1 year after surgery, according to a study of 59 patients with pre- and postoperative assessments. However, it does not rule out the potential impact of facial emotion recognition on the outcome of the surgery.