This study was designed to address the issue of whether there is a general processor for the perception of emotion or whether there are separate processors. We examined the relationships among three channels of emotional communication in 100 healthy right-handed adult males and females. The channels were facial, prosodic/intonational, and lexical/verbal; both identi® cation and discrimination tasks of emotional perception were utilised. Statistical analyses controlled for nonemotional perceptual factors and subject characteristics (i.e. demographic and general cognitive). For identi® cation, multiple signi® cant correlations were found among the channels. For discrimination, fewer correlations were signi® cant. Overall, these results provide support for the notion of a general processor for emotional perceptual identi® cation in normal adult subjects.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the perception of lexical/verbal emotion across the adult life span. Secondary goals were to examine the contribution of gender and valence (i.e., pleasantness/unpleasantness) to the processing of lexical emotional stimuli. Participants were 28 young (ages 20-39), 28 middle-aged (ages 40-59), and 28 older (ages 60-85) right-handed adults; there were 14 men and 14 women in each age group. Age groups were comparable on demographic and cognitive variables. Participants made accuracy judgments and intensity ratings of emotional (both positive and negative) and nonemotional stimuli from lexical perception tasks from the New York Emotion Battery (Borod, Welkowitz, & Obler, 1992). Accuracy and intensity measures were not significantly correlated. When age was examined, older participants perceived emotional and nonemotional lexical stimuli with significantly less accuracy than did younger and middle-aged participants. On the other hand, older participants evaluated the nonemotional lexical stimuli as significantly more intense than younger participants. When gender was examined, lexical stimuli were processed more accurately by female than male participants. Further, emotional stimuli were rated more intense by female participants. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production were examined in 16 right brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 normal control right-handed adults. The facilitation effect of emotional content, valence hypothesis, and relationship between pragmatics and emotion were evaluated. Participants produced monologues while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Transcribed monologues were rated for appropriateness on 6 pragmatic features: conciseness, lexical selection, quantity, relevancy, specificity, and topic maintenance. Overall, brain-damaged groups were rated as significantly less appropriate than normals. Consistent with the facilitation effect, emotional content enhanced pragmatic performance of LBD aphasic participants yet suppressed performance of RBD participants. Contrary to the valence hypothesis, RBD participants were more impaired for positive emotions and LBD participants for negative emotions. Pragmatic appropriateness was not strongly correlated with a measure of emotional intensity.

This study examined the relationship between facial expression and social functioning in schizophrenic, depressed, right-brain-damaged, Parkinson's disease, and normal adult participants. Raters evaluated general intensity and amount of positive and negative facial emotion while participants were producing monologues regarding pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Social functioning items were derived from three standardized inventories. Overall, patient groups displayed more negative and less positive emotion than normals, and the schizophrenic and right-brain-damaged groups showed less intense expressions than normals. Correlational analyses suggested that the more intense the facial expressions, the better the social functioning, and that the more negative emotion displayed, the poorer the social functioning.

Summary:Purpuse: Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are frequently used for their beneficial psychoactive effects on affective disorders. We sought to demonstrate a psychoactive effect of gabapentin (GBP) when used as add-on AED therapy.Methods: Forty adult patients with partial epilepsy were studied in a prospective, non-randomized fashion with interviewerrated and self-rated scales of mood and anxiety: the Cornell Dysthymia Rating Scale (CDRS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Hamilton Depression (Ham-D) and Anxiety (Ham-A) Scales. After completion of baseline mood and anxiety scales (time l ) , 20 of the 40 patients were prescribed add-on GBP (treated group). The remaining 20 patients served as a control group. Both groups were similar in age and sex distribution. Follow-up mood and anxiety scales were performed in all patients -3 months later (time 2). The average GBP dose at time 2 was 1,615 mg/day. All patients were taking stable doses Patients with epilepsy experience interictal depression more than any other mood disorder (1). Features of depression and anxiety are frequently evident in such patients even if formal diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder are not met. For example, Robertson et al. (2) reported a series of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with significantly greater depressive and anxietyrelated symptoms compared with controls. However, the patients with TLE failed to meet DSM-111-R criteria for a major depressive disorder 75% of the time (2).Blumer et al. (3) described an atypical mood disorder in one-third of patients with epilepsy admitted for neurodiagnostic monitoring. This mood disorder was characterized by depressed mood, anergia, irritability, episodic euphoria, atypical pain, insomnia, and phobias. of one to four AEDs at baseline and throughout the study. Seizure frequency was monitored throughout. Statistical significance was assessed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) by using a two-factor repeated-measures model.Results: The GBP-treated group had a significant decrease in CDRS score over time compared with the control group (p = 0.04). No significant differences between the control and the treated groups were found for any of the remaining mood scales (BDI, p = 0.58; Ham-D, p = 0.59; Ham-A, p = 0.93). There was no significant difference or change in seizure frequency between groups.Conclusions: GBP treatment is associated with mood improvement as measured by the CDRS. This improvement was not accounted for by seizure improvement.

Linguistic coherence and cohesion were examined in patients with unilateral left brain damage (LBD), unilateral right brain damage (RBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Groups were matched for age, gender, occupation, and education. Brain-damaged groups did not differ for months post onset or intrahemispheric lesion site. Contrary to previous literature, results indicated that LBDs, all of whom were aphasic, demonstrated impairments in coherence but not cohesion, relative to NCs and RBDs. Surprisingly, among RBDs, overall coherence and cohesion were spared. When the relationship between measures of coherence and cohesion was examined, there were few significant correlations and no systematic patterns. Results support the notion that coherence and cohesion represent coexisting and independent linguistic systems. Further, the findings suggest that descriptions of discourse integrity need to account for the perspective of both the speaker and listener.

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