Abstract
Social cognition deficits have been described in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), even in absence of a global cognitive impairment, affecting predominantly the ability to adequately process emotions from human faces. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to wear face masks that might interfere with facial emotion recognition. Therefore, in the present study, we aimed at investigating the ability of emotion recognition in PwMS from faces wearing masks. We enrolled a total of 42 cognitively normal relapsing–remitting PwMS and a matched group of 20 healthy controls (HCs). Participants underwent a facial emotion recognition task in which they had to recognize from faces wearing or not surgical masks which of the six basic emotions (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust) was presented. Results showed that face masks negatively affected emotion recognition in all participants (p < 0.001); in particular, PwMS showed a global worse accuracy than HCs (p = 0.005), mainly driven by the “no masked” (p = 0.021) than the “masked” (p = 0.064) condition. Considering individual emotions, PwMS showed a selective impairment in the recognition of fear, compared with HCs, in both the conditions investigated (“masked”: p = 0.023; “no masked”: p = 0.016). Face masks affected negatively also response times (p < 0.001); in particular, PwMS were globally hastier than HCs (p = 0.024), especially in the “masked” condition (p = 0.013). Furthermore, a detailed characterization of the performance of PwMS and HCs in terms of accuracy and response speed was proposed. Results from the present study showed the effect of face masks on the ability to process facial emotions in PwMS, compared with HCs. Healthcare professionals working with PwMS at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak should take into consideration this effect in their clinical practice. Implications in the everyday life of PwMS are also discussed.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilMultiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system characterized by a chronic and progressive course related to white matter and gray matter demyelination, neurodegeneration, and axonal injury processes [1–3].One of the most common clinical symptoms in people with MS (PwMS) is cognitive impairment, affecting from 34% to 65% of patients suffering from memory, attention, information processing speed, executive functioning, and social cognition deficits [4–6].During the last decade, in the MS literature, a great interest has emerged around the concept of the social cognition domain [7,8], which highly depends on facial emotion recognition, the ability to identify human emotions from facial expression [9]
In the MS literature, a great interest has emerged around the concept of the social cognition domain [7,8], which highly depends on facial emotion recognition, the ability to identify human emotions from facial expression [9]
No associations were found between emotional state (DASS-21) and facial emotion recognition (FER) Response times (RTs)
Summary
Introduction published maps and institutional affilMultiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system characterized by a chronic and progressive course related to white matter and gray matter demyelination, neurodegeneration, and axonal injury processes [1–3].One of the most common clinical symptoms in people with MS (PwMS) is cognitive impairment, affecting from 34% to 65% of patients suffering from memory, attention, information processing speed, executive functioning, and social cognition deficits [4–6].During the last decade, in the MS literature, a great interest has emerged around the concept of the social cognition domain [7,8], which highly depends on facial emotion recognition, the ability to identify human emotions from facial expression [9]. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system characterized by a chronic and progressive course related to white matter and gray matter demyelination, neurodegeneration, and axonal injury processes [1–3]. One of the most common clinical symptoms in people with MS (PwMS) is cognitive impairment, affecting from 34% to 65% of patients suffering from memory, attention, information processing speed, executive functioning, and social cognition deficits [4–6]. In the MS literature, a great interest has emerged around the concept of the social cognition domain [7,8], which highly depends on facial emotion recognition, the ability to identify human emotions from facial expression [9]. Deficits in facial emotion recognition have been described in MS populations in many recent studies, even independently from global cognitive impairment [10–12]. We demonstrated the lower performance of cognitively normal MS individuals in a facial emotion recognition task, iations
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