Changes of emotional prosody in Parkinson's disease

Even though the mesocortical dopamine system is known to play an important role in affect control and reward related behaviour, only little is known about the impact of Parkinson's disease on emotional communication. The ability to perceive and express emotions via speech plays an essential role in every day social life. Here, studies investigating perception and production of emotional prosody in Parkinson's disease will be reviewed and own results will be presented. Evidence will be provided that patients with Parkinson's disease do have changes of emotional prosody processing and that they also show alterations of emotional speech production. Together, these studies highlight the importance of the basal ganglia and their connections for emotional communication.