Abstracts

RATIONALE: Visual and auditory expression of emotion communicate others states and ability to recognise emotions is necessary for appropriate human social interaction. Impairments in recognition of facial expressions occurs when there is bilateral destruction of the amygdala (e.g., Calder et al.,1996). However, there is disagreement as to the role of the amygdala in processing auditory information (Scott et al., 1997; Anderson and Phelps, 1998) and if unilateral amygdala damage (UAD) is associated with impairments in emotion recognition. In this study, ability to recognise auditory and visual expression of emotions was investigated in people with UAD and temporal lobe epilepsy.
METHODS: Visual and auditory recognition of five basic emotions was tested between three groups. These groups were: right lateralised amygdala damage (N=11); left lateralised amygdala damage (N=15) and a comparison group recruited from a pain management programme(N=18). Four computerised experiments were administered: facial expressions, sentences describing emotion-laden situations, non-verbal sounds and prosody. The number of correct responses and reaction times were recorded. Mood, an estimate of pre-morbid IQ and face recognition were also tested.
RESULTS: Interim results showed:
Estimated premorbid IQ and ability to recognise faces were within the average range for all subjects. No subjects were severely depressed or anxious.
Comparison between groups of the total number of correct responses: A repeated measures ANOVA was calculated between groups and the mean total number correct in each experiment was non-significant (p=0.304, d.f.=2, F=1.224).
Comparison between groups and reaction time: repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyse reaction times for each task. Significant differences between groups were found in prosody (p=0.019, d.f.=2, F=3.452), sentences (p=0.043, d.f.=2, F=3.405), and sounds (p=0.049, d.f.=2, f=3.251).
CONCLUSIONS: The results show no overall effect of UAD on emotion recognition. However, individual cases with UAD were significantly impaired in both auditory and visual domains. Furthermore, UAD groups were significantly slower at recognising emotional expressions in sound, prosody and sentence presentations. This suggests that people with UAD find these tasks more difficult and a sub-group of people with epilepsy have particular difficulty recognising emotions in others. Further research is needed to investigate the interaction between social and neuroanatomical impairments in people with epilepsy.
Support: Not applicable
Study completed in part fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester