Perception of facial identity and emotional expressions is fundamental to social interactions. Recently, interest in age associated changes in the processing of faces has grown rapidly. Due to the lack of older faces stimuli, most previous age-comparative studies only used young faces stimuli, which might cause own-age advantage. None of the existing Eastern face stimuli databases contain face images of different age groups (e.g. older adult faces). In this study, a database that comprises images of 110 Chinese young and older adults displaying eight facial emotional expressions (Neutral, Happiness, Anger, Disgust, Surprise, Fear, Content, and Sadness) was constructed. To validate this database, each image was rated on the basis of perceived facial expressions, perceived emotional intensity, and perceived age by two different age groups. Results have shown an overall 79.08% correct identification rate in the validation. Access to the freely available database can be requested by emailing the corresponding authors.

In the last 15 years, increasing numbers of individuals have self-referred to research laboratories in the belief that they experience severe everyday difficulties with face recognition. The condition “developmental prosopagnosia” (DP) is typically diagnosed when impairment is identified on at least two objective face-processing tests, usually involving assessments of face perception, unfamiliar face memory, and famous face recognition. While existing evidence suggests that some individuals may have a mnemonic form of prosopagnosia, it is also possible that other subtypes exist. The current study assessed 165 adults who believe they experience DP, and 38% of the sample were impaired on at least two of the tests outlined above. While statistical dissociations between face perception and face memory were only observed in four cases, a further 25% of the sample displayed dissociations between impaired famous face recognition and intact short-term unfamiliar face memory and face perception. We discuss whether this pattern of findings reflects (a) limitations within dominant diagnostic tests and protocols, (b) a less severe form of DP, or (c) a currently unrecognized but prevalent form of the condition that affects long-term face memory, familiar face recognition or semantic processing.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) generally have a higher proportion of suffering from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) than normal aged adults. This study aimed to identify the specific neuroanatomical alterations in early, drug-naive PD with MCI (PD-MCI) by comparing to those PD with normal cognition (PD-NC) and healthy controls (HCs), which could help to elucidate the underlying neuropathology and facilitate the development of early therapeutic strategies for treating this disease. Structural MRI data of 237 early, drug-naive non-demented PD patients (classified as 61 PD-MCI and 176 PD-NC) and 69 HCs were included from Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) database after data quality control. Within these data, a subset of 61 HCs and a subset of 61 PD-NC who were matched to the 61 PD-MCI group for age, gender, and education-level were selected to further eliminate the sample size effect. The gray matter (GM) volume changes between groups were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Furthermore, correlations between GM volume alterations and neuropsychological performances and non-cognitive assessments (including olfactory performance) were further examined. Compared to HC, patients with PD-NC and PD-MCI commonly exhibited atrophies in the bilateral amygdala (AM) and the left primary motor cortex (M1). Patients with PD-MCI exclusively exhibited atrophy in the right entorhinal cortex (ENT) compared to PD-NC. Significantly negative correlations were found between GM loss in the bilateral AM and olfactory performance in all PD patients, and between ENT loss and memory performance in PD-MCI. The findings suggest that the right ENT atrophy may subserve as a biomarker in early, drug-naive PD-MCI, which shed light on the neural underpinnings of the disease and provide new evidence on differentiating the neuroanatomical states between PD-MCI and PD-NC.