Deficits in recognition of emotional facial expression are still present in alcoholics after mid- to long-term abstinence.

Abstract

Objective: Emotional facial expression (EFE) decoding skills play a key role in interpersonal relationships. Decoding errors have been described in several pathological conditions, including alcoholism. The aim of this study was to investigate whether EFE decoding skill deficits persist after abstention from alcohol of at least 2 months. Method: Alcoholic patients abstinent for at least 2 months (n = 25) were compared with 25 recently detoxified patients and with 25 normal controls matched for age, gender and educational level. Subjects were presented with 40 photographs of facial expressions portraying happiness, anger, sadness, disgust and fear. Each emotion was displayed with neutral, mild, moderate and strong emotional intensity. Each facial expression was judged successively on eight scales labeled happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, shame and contempt. For each scale, subjects rated the estimated intensity level. A complementary scale assessed the selfestimated difficulty in performing the task. Results: Recently detoxified alcoholics were significantly less accurate than controls, making more EFE labeling errors and overestimating the intensity of the portrayed emotions. Deficits in decoding accuracy for anger and disgust were present in mid-to long-term abstinent patients; intensity overestimation was present in the former and absent in the latter. Conclusions: Deficits in decoding accuracy for anger and disgust, and to a lesser degree sadness, persist with an abstinence of 2 months and beyond. Right frontotemporal regions and cingulate could be implicated. These deficits may contribute to the social skills deficits frequently encountered in alcoholic patients. (J. Stud. Alcohol 62: [533][534][535][536][537][538][539][540][541][542] 2001)

Frontal White Matter and Cingulum Diffusion Tensor Imaging Deficits in Alcoholism

“…The orbitofrontal cortex also has a role in the processing of affective stimuli, specifically emotion-related learning, and damage to this region or its associated white matter tracts may be responsible for the inability in alcoholics to alter associations between a reward (positive reinforcement such as alcohol) and an affective stimulus (Hornak et al, 1996). There is strong evidence of deficiency in emotional processing in alcoholism that implicates orbitofrontal cortex and/or anterior cingulate cortex (Davis et al, 2005;Kornreich et al, 2001;Uekermann et al, 2005;Volkow et al, 1997).…”

Recognition of facial expressions in obsessive–compulsive disorder

“…Researchers have documented abnormalities in facial expression recognition in alcoholism (Kornreich et al, 2001a(Kornreich et al, , 2001b, Alzheimer's disease (Hargrave, Maddock, & Stone, 2002), anorexia nervosa (Zonnevijlle-Bendek, van Goozen, Cohen-Kettenis, van Elburg, & van Engeland, 2002), bipolar disorder (Ketter & Lembke, 2002), criminal psychopathy (Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, & Libby, 2002), social phobia (Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes, & Long, 2001), major depression (Rubinow & Post, 1992), schizophrenia (Addington & Addington, 1998;Archer, Hay, & Young, 1992;Heimberg, Gur, Erwin, Shtasel, & Gur, 1992), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Sprengelmeyer et al, 1997), the subject of this investigation.…”

Dysfunctions of Facial Emotion Recognition in Adult Neuropsychiatric Disorders: Influence on interpersonal difficulties

“…Recently detoxified alcoholics decode less accurately EFE than normal controls (Oscar-Berman et al, 1990;Philippot et al, 1999;Kornreich et al, 2001a;2001b) and they overestimate the intensity of EFE Kornreich et al, 2001a;2001b). They also need more intensity of nonverbal signal to perceive an expression as being present (Frigerio, Burt, Montagne, Murray, & Perett, 2002), and they seem on some studies to display different patterns of interpretation of emotion as compared to controls, with a specific bias for hostile emotions Frigerio et al, 2002;Townshend & Duka, 2003).…”

“…This difficulty to decode EFE is present even in patients abstinent for at least 2 months (Kornreich et al, 2001a). This observation might imply that these deficits are either due to the influence of chronic alcohol consumption on the brain, that this influence is not easily reversed and could even be permanent, or that the deficits could be present before the development of alcoholism.…”