A study on emotion recognition in patients with idiopathic epilepsy / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the abilities of emotion recognition and social cognition in patients with idiopathic epilepsy and further explore the factors related to the impairments.Methods After 24-hour EEG monitoring,70 people with idiopathic epilepsy were administered with a neuropsychological battery for basic cognitive assessment and then were tested with the Eye Basic Emotion Discrimination Task (EBEDT) and the Eye Complex Emotion Discrimination Task (ECEDT).Results Compared with health controls,people with epilepsy got significantly lower score in recognizing happy (19.3±2.0 vs 19.9±0.2),angry (17.9±2.0 vs 18.9±1.0),sadness (18.1±2.3 vs 19.2±1.0),fear (16.4±1.9 vs 17.6±1.3),disgust (17.6±2.1 vs 18.6±1.2) and surprise (18.3±1.5 vs 19.1±1.1) (P＜0.05,respectively),as well as complex emotions ((23.3±4.2) vs (27.1±2.8),P＜0.05).There was no significant difference between the two groups in gender recognition (P＞0.05).Significant positive correlation was found between the total score of basic emotions and the mind reading (r=0.444,P=0.000) in the patient group.Correlation analysis revealed significant relation between the total correct number of emotion recognition and the level of anxiety,depression and the executive function in epilepsy group (P＜0.05,respectively).Significant associations were found between the ECEDT and the Digital Span test,the Stroop test,Beck Depression Index and Hamilton Anxiety Scale (P＜0.05,respectively).Conclusion People with epilepsy have general impairments of emotion recognition and theory of mind,the impairments may be associated with the state of mood disorder and the weakened executive function.