[Relationship between severity of hypomimia and basic emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease].

Introduction: Parkinson's disease is characterised by the presence of motor symptoms including hypomimia, and by non-motor symptoms including alterations in facial recognition of basic emotions. Few studies have investigated this alteration and its relationship to the severity of hypomimia.

Objective: The objective is to study the relationship between hypomimia and the facial recognition of basic emotions in subjects with Parkinson's disease.

Subjects and methods: Twenty-three patients and 29 controls were evaluated with the test battery for basic emotion facial recognition. The patients were divided into two subgroups according to the intensity of their hypomimia.

Results: The comparison in battery test performance between the minimal/mild hypomimia and moderate/severe hypomimia groups was statistically significant in favour of the former group.

Conclusions: This finding shows a close relationship between expression and facial recognition of emotions, which could be explained through the mechanism of motor simulation.