Relationship between individual differences in functional connectivity and facial-emotion recognition abilities in adults with traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Although several studies have demonstrated that facial-affect recognition impairment is common following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), and that there are diffuse alterations in large-scale functional brain networks in TBI populations, little is known about the relationship between the two. Here, in a sample of 26 participants with TBI and 20 healthy comparison participants (HC) we measured facial-affect recognition abilities and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) using fMRI. We then used network-based statistics to examine (A) the presence of rs-FC differences between individuals with TBI and HC within the facial-affect processing network, and (B) the association between inter-individual differences in emotion recognition skills and rs-FC within the facial-affect processing network. We found that participants with TBI showed significantly lower rs-FC in a component comprising homotopic and within-hemisphere, anterior-posterior connections within the facial-affect processing network. In addition, within the TBI group, participants with higher emotion-labeling skills showed stronger rs-FC within a network comprised of intra- and inter-hemispheric bilateral connections. Findings indicate that the ability to successfully recognize facial-affect after TBI is related to rs-FC within components of facial-affective networks, and provide new evidence that further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emotion recognition impairment in TBI.

Different aspects of facial affect recognition impairment following traumatic brain injury: The role of perceptual and interpretative abilities

“…Participants were recruited through the University of Iowa community and through the University of Iowa Brain Injury Registry (Rigon, Turkstra, et al, 2016; Rigon, Voss, Turkstra, Mutlu, & Duff, 2016, 2017). …”

Altered resting‐state functional connectivity within the developing social brain after pediatric traumatic brain injury

“…A line of research has begun to investigate the integrity of other well‐established large‐scale functional neural networks post‐TBI. In adults with moderate to severe TBI, abnormal functional connectivity (including both hypo‐ and hyper‐connectivity) has been observed in resting‐state networks subserving motor, memory, cognitive, and visual processing (Guo et al, ; Hillary et al, , ; Rigon, Duff, McAuley, Kramer, & Voss, ; Rigon, Voss, Turkstra, Mutlu, & Duff, , ; Shumskaya, van Gerven, Norris, Vos, & Kessels, ; Threlkeld et al, ). The most common findings points to functional connectivity abnormalities in the brain's default mode network (DMN) and salience network after adult TBI (Guo et al, ; Hillary et al, ; Threlkeld et al, ; Zhou et al, ).…”

Face Recognition Abilities in Iraqi Medical Students: An Inferential, Cross Sectional Analysis

“…Davis and colleagues suggested that prosopagnosia could be either developmental or acquired as a consequence of specific cortical neuronal damage (3,4). Overall, exploitation of super-recognizers is invaluable, particularly in lawenforcement and intelligence agencies (5)(6)(7)(8)(9).…”

“…These individuals are the exact opposite of people with a medical condition, known as "prosopagnosia" or "face blindness". In this condition, an individual has deteriorated or limited abilities to recognise faces (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9).…”