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Alexithymia and impaired facial affect recognition in multiple sclerosis

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Abstract

Despite the high relevance of emotion processing for social functioning, the study of the impairment of facial affect in multiple sclerosis (MS) has received little attention. Previous research reported evidence for emotion processing deficits but the nature and extent are not fully explained. Thirty-five MS patients underwent dedicated neuropsychological assessment of emotion processing using two facial affect recognition tasks and self-report measures of alexithymia. For comparison, healthy participants served as controls. Relative to healthy controls, MS patients were impaired in facial affect recognition on four of the six Ekman basic emotions, except happiness and disgust. The MS patients were more alexithymic than the healthy controls. These data provide evidence for deficits in the recognition of emotional face expressions and emotional introspection.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    D. Prochnow, J. Donell, H. P. Hartung & R. J. Seitz

  2. Medical Faculty, Clinical Institute for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Düsseldorf, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    R. Schäfer & M. Franz

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Wilhelm’s University Münster, Albert-Schweitzer-Straße 11, 48149, Münster, Germany

    S. Jörgens

Authors
  1. D. Prochnow
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  2. J. Donell
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  3. R. Schäfer
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  4. S. Jörgens
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  5. H. P. Hartung
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  6. M. Franz
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  7. R. J. Seitz
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Correspondence to D. Prochnow.

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Prochnow, D., Donell, J., Schäfer, R. et al. Alexithymia and impaired facial affect recognition in multiple sclerosis. J Neurol 258, 1683–1688 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6002-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6002-4

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