title: The affective value of faces in patients achieving long-term seizure freedom after temporal lobectomy.
abstract: We investigated different aspects of facial expression evaluation in a homogeneous cohort of 42 seizure-free patients with 5 or more years of follow-up after temporal lobectomy (TL), with the aim of further characterizing the impairment in emotion and social cognition among patients. A group of healthy subjects matched for sex, age, and education served as controls. Four tasks of facial expression evaluation were used: (a) facial expression recognition, (b) rating of the intensity of facial expression, and (c) rating of valence (pleasantness) and (d) rating of arousal induced by facial expressions. Patients had a worse performance in the recognition task for all negative emotions, while no differences in intensity ratings were found. They also reported lower arousal ratings than controls for faces showing fear, anger, disgust, and neutral expressions, as well as lower valence ratings for all facial expressions except those showing happiness. Longer epilepsy duration before TL was negatively associated with ratings of arousal and intensity and positively associated with valence ratings for fearful facial expressions. This study showed that patients who become seizure-free after TL present long-term deficits in several aspects of facial expression evaluation. Longitudinal, prospective studies are needed to evaluate if social cognition improves or declines after TL.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Science, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. Electronic address: stefano.meletti@unimore.it.
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Meletti
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Unit, National Centre of Epidemiology, Surveillance and Health Promotion, Italian National Institute of Health, Italy.
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Picardi
authors.affiliation: IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IS, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: De Risi
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Science, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Monti
authors.affiliation: IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IS, Italy.
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Esposito
authors.affiliation: IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IS, Italy.
authors.forename: Liliana G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Grammaldo
authors.affiliation: IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IS, Italy.
authors.forename: Giancarlo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Di Gennaro
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D038481:Anterior Temporal Lobectomy / Q000379:methods*; D004644:Emotions; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000601:surgery*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: Arousal; Emotion recognition; Emotions; Facial expressions; Temporal lobe epilepsy; Temporal lobectomy; Valence