Identification of emotional facial expressions in patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy

• Grant number: 10/14088-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: September 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Physiological Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Orlando Francisco Amodeo Bueno
• Grantee: Leo Heikiti Maeda Arruda
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Introduction: many studies report an impairment in facial emotion identification in patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) with hippocampal sclerosis (HS), specially for expressions of fear. Amygdala lesion studies, both bilateral and unilateral, have also reported this impairment and related it to a decrease of spontaneous eye fixation on the eye region of facial stimuli, important for discriminating between emotional expressions. It has also been reported that the instruction to fixate gaze in the eye region of faces improves the identification of facial expressions in patients with amygdala damage, often found in patients with MTLE-HS.Objective: the present study aims at studying the pattern of impairment in emotional facial expression identification in patients with MTLE-HS in relation to control subjects, as well as verifying eventual differences in the pattern of ocular fixations during the task.Method: thirty MTLE-HS patients e thirty control subjects paired by age, sex and education, will undergo neuropsychological testing in order to determine their cognitive status and the facial expression identification test with simultaneous eye tracking measures. The facial expression identification task will be repeated with the instruction to fixate eye gaze on the eyes of the facial stimuli so as to determine whether this alters the patterns of response in these patients in relation to control individuals.Perspectives: the present study will contribute to the characterization of the cognitive and emotional symptoms of MTLE-HS through the examination of differences in the patterns of emotional expression identification and their relations to eye movement during the task. If the instruction to fixate eye gaze on the eyes region of the facial stimuli improves identification of emotional expressions this may constitute a possible rehabilitation protocol to be used in these patients.