The perception of emotional facial expressions in stroke patients with and without depression

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.

To compare the perception of emotional facial expressions in stroke patients with and without depressive symptoms.

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.

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.

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.