Cocaine users manifest impaired prosodic and cross-modal emotion processing

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Addiction Research

Background:

• Previous studies suggest cocaine users (CU) have social cognition deficits, but basic facial emotion recognition is often intact.
• Systematic investigation of prosody and cross-modal emotion processing in CU is lacking.
• This study addresses the gap by assessing complex multisensory emotion processing in CU.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate complex multisensory emotion processing in cocaine users (CU) compared to healthy controls (HC).
• To investigate the association between emotion processing deficits and drug use patterns in CU.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the abbreviated Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS-A) for emotion perception assessment.
• Assessed emotion perception across facial affect, prosody, and semantic content.
• Included 58 CU and 48 HC, matched for age, sex, verbal intelligence, and education.

Main Results:

• CU scored significantly lower than HC in 'emotion recognition' and 'prosody recognition' quotients.
• Impairments were noted in tasks requiring attention to prosody or cross-modal integration (e.g., matching prosody to face).
• No group differences were found in 'affect recognition quotient'; higher cumulative cocaine use correlated with poorer emotion processing.

Conclusions:

• Cocaine users (CU) exhibit impaired cross-modal integration of emotional cues, especially involving prosody.
• Basic facial affect perception remains comparable between CU and HC.
• Findings highlight the impact of cocaine use on complex, multisensory emotion processing and its link to drug use severity.