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Emotion recognition deficits in pediatric anxiety disorders: implications for amygdala research
Josh Easter1, Erin B McClure, Christopher S Monk
1Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-2670, USA.
Introduction:
Anxiety disorders in adults involve aberrant processing of emotional information that is hypothesized to reflect perturbations in the amygdala. This study examines the relationship between face-emotion recognition and anxiety in a sample of children and adolescents participating in a brain-imaging study of amygdala structure and function.
Methods:
This study recruited 15 children and adolescents with ongoing anxiety disorders and 11 psychiatrically healthy comparisons group-matched on age, gender, and IQ. Face-emotion recognition was assessed using the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy Scale (DANVA).
Results:
Children and adolescents with anxiety disorders exhibited significantly poorer performance on the face-emotion recognition task compared to healthy controls (z = 2.2; p < 0.05). This difference was found only for expressions posed by adults but not children.
Discussion:
Reduced accuracy on a face-emotion recognition test is consistent with perturbed amygdala function in pediatric anxiety disorders.
Conclusion:
As this study was conducted in a sample undergoing a neuroimaging investigation of amygdala integrity, future analyses will examine associations among amygdala function, clinical anxiety, and face-recognition abilities.
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