The late positive potential, emotion and apathy in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is associated with emotional changes including depression, apathy, and anxiety. The current study investigated emotional processing in non-demented individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) using an electrophysiological measure, the centro-parietal late positive potential (LPP). Non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (n=17) and healthy control participants (n=16) viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures while EEG was recorded from a 64-channel geodesic net. The Parkinson patients did not differ from controls in terms of early electrophysiological components that index perceptual processing (occipital P100, N150, P250). Parkinson patients, however, showed reduced LPP amplitude specifically when viewing unpleasant, compared to pleasant, pictures as well as when compared to controls, consistent with previous studies suggesting a specific difference in aversive processing between PD patients and healthy controls. Importantly, LPP amplitude during unpleasant picture viewing was most attenuated for patients reporting high apathy. The data suggest that apathy in PD may be related to a deficit in defensive activation, and may be indexed cortically using event-related potentials.