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Facial Emotion Recognition Ability in Patients with Fibromyalgia.
S Suzen Ozbayrak1, H Battal1, H H Gokpinar1
1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Haydarpaşa Numune Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey.
La Clinica Terapeutica
|November 25, 2021
Summary
Fibromyalgia patients show difficulty recognizing sad emotions and take longer to identify happy, angry, neutral, and surprised expressions. This may impact social functioning and disease chronicity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Medical Research
Background:
- Facial expression recognition is crucial for social interaction and empathy.
- Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain condition often associated with heightened sensitivity to negative moods.
- Previous research suggests potential alterations in emotional processing in FM patients.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate facial emotion recognition abilities in patients with fibromyalgia compared to healthy controls.
- To test the hypothesis that fibromyalgia patients recognize negative emotions more readily than positive emotions.
- To explore potential correlations between emotional recognition deficits and disease characteristics.
Main Methods:
- A cohort of 31 fibromyalgia patients meeting ACR 1990 criteria and 24 age/sex-matched healthy controls participated.
- Participants completed the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI).
- Facial emotion recognition was assessed using the Facial Emotion Recognition Test.
Main Results:
- Fibromyalgia patients exhibited significantly higher scores on depression and anxiety inventories compared to controls.
- Patients with FM demonstrated a significantly lower accuracy in recognizing sad facial expressions.
- Fibromyalgia patients required more time to recognize happy, surprised, neutral, and angry facial emotions.
Conclusions:
- This study reveals impaired recognition of sad facial emotions and delayed processing of other facial emotions in fibromyalgia patients.
- These deficits in facial emotion recognition may contribute to poor interpersonal relationships and social functioning.
- Altered emotional processing could potentially exacerbate the chronicity and impact of fibromyalgia.
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