Facial emotional recognition in schizophrenia: preliminary results of the virtual reality program for facial emotional recognition

Abstract

Background: Significant deficits in emotional recognition and social perception characterize patients with schizophrenia and have direct negative impact both in inter-personal relationships and in social functioning. Virtual reality, as a methodological resource, might have a high potential for assessment and training skills in people suffering from mental illness. Objectives: To present preliminary results of a facial emotional recognition assessment designed for patients with schizophrenia, using 3D avatars and virtual reality. Methods: Presentation of 3D avatars which reproduce images developed with the FaceGen® software and integrated in a three-dimensional virtual environment. Each avatar was presented to a group of 12 patients with schizophrenia and a reference group of 12 subjects without psychiatric pathology. Results: The results show that the facial emotions of happiness and anger are better recognized by both groups and that the major difficulties arise in fear and disgust recognition. Frontal alpha electroencephalography variations were found during the presentation of anger and disgust stimuli among patients with schizophrenia. Discussion: The developed program evaluation module can be of surplus value both for patient and therapist, providing the task execution in a non anxiogenic environment, however similar to the actual experience.

Visual processing of emotional dynamic faces in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

“…Results can be quite different between emotion-processing studies using different types of stimuli. For example, in contrast with previous findings using static images of emotional faces, Souto et al (2012) found no differences between a group of adults with schizophrenia and healthy controls on an emotion-recognition task using dynamic stimuli. On the other hand, a study by Speer et al (2007) in autism shows differences between dynamic and static facial processing, with autistic individuals looking less at the eyes during dynamic stimuli.…”

“…For this reason, we expressly designed this emotion-recognition task so that individuals with 22q11DS could perform similarly to controls, which allowed us to compare visual scanning of emotions in two groups who both performed well on the task. We expected that the ecological validity of our stimuli would enable participants with 22q11DS to perform well on the task, as was shown by Souto et al (2012) in patients with schizophrenia. Moreover, per Kohler et al (2003), we expected individuals with 22q11DS to recognise emotions when they were further on in the dynamic films and the faces presented were higher in intensity with more exaggerated expressions.…”

Detecting facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia using dynamic stimuli of varying intensities

“…Notwithstanding this however, all studies found that patients had a decreased ability to correctly identify the emotion expressed in dynamic faces compared to controls. This deficit in emotion recognition was also apparent in relatives of patients [61], and in healthy individuals possessing schizotypal traits [1]. In addition, functional neuroimaging research from our lab has shown that patients with schizophrenia show altered activity of brain regions involved in emotion processing while viewing dynamic facial expressions compared to healthy controls, which may contribute towards some of these deficits [48].…”

“…Despite this, only a handful of behavioural studies have been conducted to date involving patients with SZ, in which facial emotion-processing accuracy to dynamic facial emotion stimuli was assessed [3,6,53,31,46,8,61]. The validity of both the Archer and Russell studies as measurements of patient accuracy during dynamic face emotion recognition tasks has been questioned [31].…”

“…Only four studies [6,46,61] implemented a multi-intensity dynamic model, with only one of these [6] reporting on the effects of intensity on emotion recognition accuracy. In this study, it was found that emotion recognition is impaired at moderate and high intensities, but not at low intensities, when compared to healthy controls.…”