Emotional Facial Expressions In Patients Research Articles

Revisiting emotion recognition in different types of temporal lobe epilepsy: The influence of facial expression intensity

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) can induce various difficulties in recognizing emotional facial expressions (EFE), particularly for negative valence emotions. However, these difficulties have not been systematically examined according to the localization of the epileptic focus. For this purpose, we used a forced-choice recognition task in which faces expressing fear, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, or happiness were presented in different intensity levels from moderate to high intensity. The first objective of our study was to evaluate the impact of emotional intensity on the recognition of different categories of EFE in TLE patients compared to control participants. The second objective was to assess the effect of localizationof epileptic focus on the recognition of EFE in patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) associated or not with hippocampal sclerosis (HS), or lateral temporal lobe epilepsy (LTLE). The results showed that the 272 TLE patients and the 68 control participants were not differently affected by the intensity of EFE. However, we obtained group differences within the clinical population when we took into account the localization of the temporal lobe epileptic focus. As predicted, TLE patients were impaired in recognizing fear and disgust relative to controls. Moreover, the scores of these patients varied according to the localization of the epileptic focus, but not according to the cerebral lateralization of TLE. The facial expression of fear was less well recognized by MTLE patients, with or without HS, and the expression of disgust was less well recognized by LTLE as well as MTLE without HS patients. Moreover, emotional intensity modulated differently the recognition of disgust and surprise of the three patient groups underlying the relevance of using moderate emotional intensity to distinguish the effect of epileptic focus localization. These findings should be taken into account for interpreting the emotional behaviors and deserve to befurther investigated before considering TLE surgical treatment or social cognition interventions in TLE patients.

Facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia - a review of research and a model of pathogenesis

Objective: The aim of the paper is to describe in detail the problems in the field of recognising emotional facial expressions in patients with schizophrenia. This paper also analyses studies and theoretical literature on the potential connections between deficits in recognition of emotional facial expressions and neuronal dysfunctions and attachment styles. Materials and method: The literature review was performed using the following databases: EBSCO, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The databases were searched using the following keywords: ‘emotion’, ‘facial emotion’, ‘facial expression’. Those terms were combined with the words 'recognition', 'perception', 'genetic', 'attachment style' and each time with the term 'schizophrenia'. Results: The literature review clearly confirms that among people suffering from schizophrenia there are problems with recognising emotional facial expressions. Studies suggest that the visual perception of patients is related to the recognition of facial expressions. Studies also confirm the relationship of neuronal dysfunctions and genetic factors with the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Discussion and conclusions: The genesis of problems in recognising emotional facial expressions in patients with schizophrenia is multifactorial in nature. The influence of attachment styles on epigenetic mechanisms and the development of neural structures related to emotion recognition remains unverified. In the future, this study will allow for the creation of more accurate models of the pathogenesis of these deficits.

Dysfunction in Automatic Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome: An Event-Related Potential Study.

AimObstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a prevalent chronic disease characterized by sleep fragmentation and intermittent hypoxemia. Several studies suggested that electrophysiological changes and neurocognitive abnormalities occurred in OSAS patients. In this study, we compared automatic processing of emotional facial expressions schematic in OSAS patients and matched healthy controls via assessing expression-related mismatch negativity (EMMN).MethodsTwenty-two OSAS patients (mean age 44.59 years) and twenty-one healthy controls (mean age 42.71 years) were enrolled in this study. All participants underwent Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale test and polysomnographic recording. An expression-related oddball paradigm was used to elicit EMMN and the electroencephalogram was recorded and analyzed. Furthermore, Pearson’s correlations were calculated to discuss the correlation between neuropsychological test scores, clinical variables and electrophysiological data.ResultsCompared with healthy controls, OSAS sufferers demonstrated significantly reduced EMMN mean amplitudes within corresponding time intervals, regardless of happy or sad conditions. Meanwhile, we observed that amplitude of sad EMMN was larger (more negative) than happy EMNN in healthy controls, while not in patients. Moderate correlations were found between MoCA test scores, sleep parameters and EMMN amplitudes.ConclusionOur findings suggested pre-attentive dysfunction of processing emotional facial expressions in patients with OSAS, without the existence of negative bias effect. Moreover, correlation analysis showed that clinical characteristics of OSAS patients could affect EMMN amplitudes. Further studies on the advantages of EMMN as clinical and electrophysiological indicators of OSAS are warranted.

Intact Rapid Facial Mimicry as well as Generally Reduced Mimic Responses in Stable Schizophrenia Patients.

Spontaneous emotional expressions (rapid facial mimicry) perform both emotional and social functions. In the current study, we sought to test whether there were deficits in automatic mimic responses to emotional facial expressions in patients (15 of them) with stable schizophrenia compared to 15 controls. In a perception-action interference paradigm (the Simon task; first experiment), and in the context of a dual-task paradigm (second experiment), the task-relevant stimulus feature was the gender of a face, which, however, displayed a smiling or frowning expression (task-irrelevant stimulus feature). We measured the electromyographical activity in the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle regions in response to either compatible or incompatible stimuli (i.e., when the required response did or did not correspond to the depicted facial expression). The compatibility effect based on interactions between the implicit processing of a task-irrelevant emotional facial expression and the conscious production of an emotional facial expression did not differ between the groups. In stable patients (in spite of a reduced mimic reaction), we observed an intact capacity to respond spontaneously to facial emotional stimuli.

MISINTERPRETATION OF EMOTIONAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN PATIENTS DIAGNOSED WITH DISSOCIATIVE SEIZURES: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

ObjectiveResearch has shown that individuals with Dissociative Seizures (DS) disproportionately allocate attention to angry faces. Behavioural avoidance of such stimuli has also been reported. Previous studies have included emotional faces...

Distinct facial processing related negative cognitive bias in first-episode and recurrent major depression: evidence from the N170 ERP component.

BackgroundStates of depression are associated with increased sensitivity to negative events. For this novel study, we have assessed the relationship between the number of depressive episodes and the dysfunctional processing of emotional facial expressions.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe used a visual emotional oddball paradigm to manipulate the processing of emotional information while event-related brain potentials were recorded in 45 patients with first episode major depression (F-MD), 40 patients with recurrent major depression (R-MD), and 46 healthy controls (HC). Compared with the HC group, F-MD patients had lower N170 amplitudes when identifying happy, neutral, and sad faces; R-MD patients had lower N170 amplitudes when identifying happy and neutral faces, but higher N170 amplitudes when identifying sad faces. F-MD patients had longer N170 latencies when identifying happy, neutral, and sad faces relative to the HC group, and R-MD patients had longer N170 latencies when identifying happy and neutral faces, but shorter N170 latencies when identifying sad faces compared with F-MD patients. Interestingly, a negative relationship was observed between N170 amplitude and the depressive severity score for identification of happy faces in R-MD patients while N170 amplitude was positively correlated with the depressive severity score for identification of sad faces in F-MD and R-MD patients. Additionally, the deficits of N170 amplitude for sad faces positively correlated with the number of depressive episodes in R-MD patients.Conclusion/SignificanceThese results provide new evidence that having more recurrent depressive episodes and serious depressive states are likely to aggravate the already abnormal processing of emotional facial expressions in patients with depression. Moreover, it further suggests that the impaired processing as indexed by N170 amplitude for positive face identification may be a potentially useful biomarker for predicting propagation of depression while N170 amplitude for negative face identification could be a potential biomarker for depression recurrence.

Impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions in patients with multiple sclerosis

BackgroundDisturbances that occur in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are not restricted to motor, sensory, or urinary functions; they also include cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, and depression. Moreover, people with MS are known to have fewer social activities and a reduced quality of life. One aspect of social interaction is accurate recognition of facial expressions. Several studies have suggested impairment in the processing of facial expressions in patients with multiple sclerosis, but it is not clear if these deficits are based on cognitive, depressive, or other attendant symptoms. ObjectiveTo investigate emotion recognition and facial identity recognition abilities and their relation with cognitive functions, depression, and fatigue in a cohort of MS patients. MethodsEmotion recognition and facial identity recognition abilities were investigated in a cohort of 61 MS patients with unimpaired visual acuity and 53 healthy controls using the Florida Affect Battery. Additionally, we investigated possible relationships between impaired facial expression recognition and other clinical features. ResultsMS patients were not impaired in facial identity discrimination, but showed a poor performance in all subtests that required emotion recognition. ConclusionImpaired recognition of facial emotions by patients with MS seems to be associated with both cognitive and affective (depression) aspects of the disease.

Reduced Ventrolateral fMRI Response during Observation of Emotional Gestures Related to the Degree of Dopaminergic Impairment in Parkinson Disease

Recent findings point to a perceptive impairment of emotional facial expressions in patients diagnosed with Parkinson disease (PD). In these patients, administration of dopamine can modulate emotional facial recognition. We used fMRI to investigate differences in the functional activation in response to emotional and nonemotional gestures between PD patients and age-matched healthy controls (HC). In addition, we used PET to evaluate the striatal dopamine transporter availability (DAT) with [(11)C]d-threo-methylphenidate in the patient group. Patients showed an average decrease to 26% in DAT when compared to age-corrected healthy references. Reduction in the DAT of the left putamen correlated not only with motor impairment but also with errors in emotional gesture recognition. In comparison to HC, PD patients showed a specific decrease in activation related to emotional gesture observation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and the right superior temporal sulcus. Moreover, the less DAT present in the left putamen, the lower the activation in the left VLPFC. We conclude that a loss of dopaminergic neurotransmission in the putamen results in a reduction of ventrolateral prefrontal access involved in the recognition of emotional gestures.

Study about recognition of emotional facial expressions in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Objective To study whether there is a dysfunction in recognition of emotional facial expressions in patients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD). Methods 38 patients with ADHD and 36 normal controls took emotional facial expressions test and accuracy rate recorded.Results Compared with normal control group,patients in ADHD performed worse in recognition of emotional facial expressions with lower accuracy rate.Conclusion Patients with ADHD have a dysfunction in recognition of emotional facial expressions. Key words: Emotional facial expressions; Recognition; ADHD

Aversive learning in patients with unilateral lesions of the amygdala and hippocampus

The present study applied a visual half field paradigm with emotional facial expressions in patients with selective unilateral amygdalo-hippocampectomy (AHE) to elucidate the contributions of the left and right medial temporal lobe and amygdala to emotional learning. Electrodermal indicators of aversive learning were studied in 14 left AHE and 12 right AHE patients, as well as 13 controls matched in sex and age. In a differential conditioning paradigm with negative (CS+) and positive (CS−) facial expressions, CS+ were associated with an aversive vocalization (US, 95 dB, 3 s). During extinction, stimuli were presented laterally and preattentively using backward masking. Appropriate CS durations yielding preattentive presentation were individually determined prior to conditioning. In contrast to controls, both left and right AHE patients failed to show an autonomic conditioning effect following left visual field presentations of masked negative CS+ during extinction. AHE patients also showed no clear differential acquisition. Moreover, right AHE patients poorly recognised that negative valence was an affiliating dimension of the CS–US compound.

Voluntary emotional facial expressions in patients with focal cerebral lesions

This study investigates the voluntary production of emotional facial expressions in 43 brain-damaged and 9 control subjects. The expressions of right-and left-hemisphere lesion groups did not differ significantly, but those of the anterior lesion group were improverished relative to the posterior lesion and control groups. Deficits of voluntary expression were dissociable from impairments in “non-emotional” facial-motor functions, dysphasia, and unilateral neglect.

Recognition memory for emotional facial expressions in patients with focal cerebral lesions

A test of memory for emotional facial expressions was administered to 49 brain-damaged and 15 control subjects. On this task, patients with right-hemisphere lesions were more impaired than left-hemisphere patients; also, patients with frontal lobe lesions were more impaired than patients with posterior brain damage. Whereas trends in the data suggested that the anterior group's impaired memory for facial expressions may be dissociable from their deficient recall of facial identity, these two abilities were not dissociable in right-hemisphere patients. No lesion subgroup had selectively preserved recall of specific emotional expressions. There was no correlation between recall and production of facial expressions.