Negative emotion recognition impairments despite preserved neural activity in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
7 affiliations
- 1Ambulatory Assessment in Psychology Lab, Department of Psychology, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
- 2University Clinic of Neurology, Evangelical Hospital Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
- 3Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center for Stroke Research Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- 4German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease DZNE, Berlin, Germany
- 5Research Center Neurosensory Science, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
- 6Psychological Methods and Statistics, Department of Psychology, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
- 7Biological Psychology Lab, Department of Psychology, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
Abstract
Emotion recognition is an essential component of socio-emotional functioning, yet its alteration in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) remains insufficiently understood, particularly in relation to neural mechanisms. This study examined behavioral and neural responses to facial emotions in 60 adults (30 MCI, 30 healthy controls (HC)) using a validated fMRI emotion-recognition paradigm with anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and neutral expressions. Although groups did not differ in overall recognition accuracy, a multivariate analysis revealed a significant group effect driven by a selective impairment in sadness recognition in MCI. Accuracy for anger and fear showed weaker, but non-significant differences between groups, and happiness recognition was preserved. Face-processing ability, emotional interference, emotional intelligence, and domain-specific cognitive performance showed no significant associations with facial emotion recognition, indicating that the sadness-specific deficit was not attributable to perceptual, cognitive, or socio-emotional characteristics. In fMRI analyses, HCs showed widespread activation to emotional versus neutral faces across occipital, frontal, and subcortical regions, whereas patients with MCI exhibited spatially more restricted activation. However, whole-brain group comparisons revealed no significant differences in BOLD response amplitudes for overall emotion processing or any emotion-specific contrast. These findings indicate that MCI is characterized by a selective impairment in recognizing sadness, an emotion relying on subtle, low-intensity cues, while whole-brain analyses did not reveal statistically significant group differences in neural responses during emotion processing. This pattern shows that group differences in behavior did not correspond to group differences in measured neural activity.
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BibTeX
@article{mahadevan2026negative,
title = {{Negative emotion recognition impairments despite preserved neural activity in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)}},
author = {Rachana Mahadevan and Naomi Kristin Giesers and Thomas Liman and Karsten Witt and Andrea Hildebrandt and Mandy Roheger and Stephanie Rosemann},
journal = {Imaging Neuroscience},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1162/imag.a.1428},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1162/imag.a.1428},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Negative emotion recognition impairments despite preserved neural activity in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
AU - Rachana Mahadevan
AU - Naomi Kristin Giesers
AU - Thomas Liman
AU - Karsten Witt
AU - Andrea Hildebrandt
AU - Mandy Roheger
AU - Stephanie Rosemann
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
JO - Imaging Neuroscience
DO - 10.1162/imag.a.1428
UR - https://doi.org/10.1162/imag.a.1428
AB - Emotion recognition is an essential component of socio-emotional functioning, yet its alteration in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) remains insufficiently understood, particularly in relation to neural mechanisms. This study examined behavioral and neural responses to facial emotions in 60 adults (30 MCI, 30 healthy controls (HC)) using a validated fMRI emotion-recognition paradigm with anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and neutral expressions. Although groups did not differ in overall recognition accuracy, a multivariate analysis revealed a significant group effect driven by a selective impairment in sadness recognition in MCI. Accuracy for anger and fear showed weaker, but non-significant differences between groups, and happiness recognition was preserved. Face-processing ability, emotional interference, emotional intelligence, and domain-specific cognitive performance showed no significant associations with facial emotion recognition, indicating that the sadness-specific deficit was not attributable to perceptual, cognitive, or socio-emotional characteristics. In fMRI analyses, HCs showed widespread activation to emotional versus neutral faces across occipital, frontal, and subcortical regions, whereas patients with MCI exhibited spatially more restricted activation. However, whole-brain group comparisons revealed no significant differences in BOLD response amplitudes for overall emotion processing or any emotion-specific contrast. These findings indicate that MCI is characterized by a selective impairment in recognizing sadness, an emotion relying on subtle, low-intensity cues, while whole-brain analyses did not reveal statistically significant group differences in neural responses during emotion processing. This pattern shows that group differences in behavior did not correspond to group differences in measured neural activity.
SN - 2837-6056
ER -