title: The perception of emotional facial expressions in stroke patients with and without depression.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Emotion perception may be impaired after stroke. No study on emotion perception after stroke has taken the influence of post-stroke depressive symptoms into account, although depressive symptoms themselves may hamper emotion perception.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To compare the perception of emotional facial expressions in stroke patients with and without depressive symptoms.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-two stroke patients participated whose depressive symptoms were classified using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (cutoff = 10) and who were compared with healthy controls. Emotion recognition was measured using morphed images of facial expressions.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients with depressive symptoms performed worse than controls on all emotions; patients without depressive symptoms performed at control level. Patients with depressive symptoms were less sensitive to the emotions anger, happiness and sadness compared with patients without depressive symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Post-stroke depressive symptoms impair emotion perception. This extends findings in bipolar disorder indicating that emotion perception deficits are strongly related to the level of depression.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Montagne
authors.affiliation: 2Laboratory for Neuropsychology, Department of Internal Medicine - Section Neurology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Gudrun M S
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Nys
authors.affiliation: 3Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martine J E
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: van Zandvoort
authors.affiliation: 3Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: L Jaap
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Kappelle
authors.affiliation: 3Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Edward H F
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: de Haan
authors.affiliation: 5Departments of Geriatric Medicine.
authors.forename: Roy P C
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Kessels