Vocal emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: Beyond a general deficit

Vocal emotion recognition allows listeners to infer the emotional state of speakers from their vocal cues. This ability relies on sequential processing involving perceptual, lexical and semantic components. Although people living with Parkinson's disease (PwPD) can experience difficulties in recognising vocal emotions, the underlying deficit(s) remain unknown. This cross-sectional study compared 17 PwPD without dementia with 32 people not living with Parkinson's disease (nPwPD) to examine the impact of Parkinson's disease on vocal emotion recognition abilities. Participants completed a general vocal emotion recognition task and three tasks assessing its underlying cognitive components. Results showed reduced general vocal emotion recognition in PwPD, and a specific impairment at the perceptual level, corresponding to the lower‑level processing stage selectively associated with impaired pitch discrimination. These findings suggest that altered pitch perception may contribute to vocal emotion recognition difficulties in PwPD, and may inform clinical management, ultimately contributing to improving PwPD's quality of life.