Recognition of emotions from faces and voices in medial temporal lobe epilepsy

Patients with chronic medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) can be impaired in different tasks that evaluate emotional or social abilities. In particular, the recognition of facial emotions can be affected (Meletti S, Benuzzi F, Rubboli G, et al. Neurology 2003;60:426–31. Meletti S, Benuzzi F, Cantalupo G, Rubboli G, Tassinari CA, Nichelli P. Epilepsia 2009;50:1547–59). To better understand the nature of emotion recognition deficits in MTLE we investigated the decoding of basic emotions in the visual (facial expression) and auditory (emotional prosody) domains in 41 patients. Results showed deficits in the recognition of both facial and vocal expression of emotions, with a strong correlation between performances across the two tasks. No correlation between emotion recognition and measures of IQ, quality of life (QOLIE-31), and depression (Beck Depression Inventory) was significant, except for a weak correlation between prosody recognition and IQ. These data suggest that emotion recognition impairment in MTLE is not dependent on the sensory channel through which the emotional stimulus is transmitted. Moreover, these findings support the notion that emotional processing is at least partly independent of measures of cognitive intelligence.

Research highlights
► Patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy can be impaired in recognition of both facial and vocal emotions.
► Deficits in emotion recognition are constantly observed in bilateral medial temporal sclerosis.
► Deficits in emotion recognition are widespread across negative emotions.
► Facial emotion recognition does not correlate with IQ, QOLIE-31, and depression scores.