title: Alexithymia and impaired facial affect recognition in multiple sclerosis.
abstract: Despite the high relevance of emotion processing for social functioning, the study of the impairment of facial affect in multiple sclerosis (MS) has received little attention. Previous research reported evidence for emotion processing deficits but the nature and extent are not fully explained. Thirty-five MS patients underwent dedicated neuropsychological assessment of emotion processing using two facial affect recognition tasks and self-report measures of alexithymia. For comparison, healthy participants served as controls. Relative to healthy controls, MS patients were impaired in facial affect recognition on four of the six Ekman basic emotions, except happiness and disgust. The MS patients were more alexithymic than the healthy controls. These data provide evidence for deficits in the recognition of emotional face expressions and emotional introspection.
authors: Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany. deniseprochnow82@gmail.com
authors: D
authors: D
authors: Prochnow
authors: J
authors: J
authors: Donell
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Schäfer
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Jörgens
authors: H P
authors: HP
authors: Hartung
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Franz
authors: R J
authors: RJ
authors: Seitz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D011446:Prospective Studies; D055815:Young Adult