title: Impaired emotional facial expression recognition in alcoholics, opiate dependence subjects, methadone maintained subjects and mixed alcohol-opiate antecedents subjects compared with normal controls.
abstract: The present study aims to explore whether an impairment in emotional facial expressions (EFE) decoding is specific to alcoholism compared with opiate dependence. An EFE decoding test consisting of 16 photographs of EFE portraying happiness, anger, sadness and disgust was administered to five different groups of 30 subjects each: recently detoxified alcoholics (RA); opiate addicts under methadone maintenance treatment (OM); detoxified opiate addicts (OA); detoxified subjects with both alcohol and opiate dependence antecedents (DAO); and normal controls (NC). Repeated measures analysis of variance using a multivariate approach was conducted on EFE decoding accuracy scores with group as the between-subjects factor. Accuracy scores were significantly lower in RA and DAO than in OM and OA, which had significantly lower scores than NC. Low accuracy scores in RA and DAO confirm previous results indicating that alcoholism is associated with impaired EFE recognition. Results in OM and OA indicate that opiate dependence is also associated with an impaired EFE decoding but less than in alcoholism. Alcohol and opiate chronic consumption could both exercise a deleterious effect on EFE-decoding brain function, alcohol having the most severe impact. Alternatively, EFE-decoding problems could be present before the development of alcohol and opiate dependence, with an additional effect of chronic alcohol consumption on EFE decoding. In this context, EFE-decoding impairment could reflect a more general emotional intelligence deficit in addicted populations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Free University of Brussels, Brugmann Hospital, Place Van Gehuchten 4, 1020 Brussels, Belgium. ckornrei@ulb.ac.be
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kornreich
authors.forename: Marie-Line
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Foisy
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Philippot
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dan
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tecco
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Noël
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hess
authors.forename: Isidore
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pelc
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Verbanck
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008691:Methadone / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009294:Narcotics / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D009293:Opioid-Related Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000523:psychology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception
chemical_list: D009294:Narcotics; D008691:Methadone