Explicit Facial Emotion Processing in Patients With Dissociative Seizures

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Psychology

Background:

• Explicit facial affect recognition is crucial for social interaction.
• Few studies have investigated facial affect recognition in patients with dissociative seizures (DS).
• Understanding these deficits is vital for improving patient care and therapeutic interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate explicit facial affect recognition and physiological responses to facial expressions in patients with DS compared to healthy controls.
• To explore the relationship between trauma, abandonment concerns, and facial affect recognition in DS.
• To examine autonomic arousal and responses to emotional stimuli in DS.

Main Methods:

• A computerized facial affect recognition test was administered to 40 patients with DS and 43 healthy controls.
• Dependent measures included recognition accuracy, emotional intensity judgments, and skin conductance levels and responses.
• Analyses controlled for anxiety, depression, and medication effects, and correlated recognition with trauma and abandonment scores.

Main Results:

• Patients with DS demonstrated significantly lower accuracy in identifying facial expressions compared to controls.
• No group differences were found in judging the intensity of facial expressions.
• While overall skin conductance levels were higher in the DS group, a subset showed attenuated responses to facial stimuli.
• Reduced recognition accuracy for neutral faces correlated with higher trauma and abandonment scores in the DS group.

Conclusions:

• Patients with DS exhibit deficits in recognizing facial affect, despite intact intensity perception.
• Elevated autonomic arousal may be a general characteristic of DS, with some patients showing reduced phasic autonomic responses to facial cues.
• These findings highlight the complex interplay between emotional processing, autonomic function, and trauma in dissociative seizures.