Recognition of emotion with temporal lobe epilepsy and asymmetrical amygdala damage.

PURPOSE

Impairments in emotion recognition occur when there is bilateral damage to the amygdala. In this study, ability to recognize auditory and visual expressions of emotion was investigated in people with asymmetrical amygdala damage (AAD) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

METHODS

Recognition of five emotions was tested across three participant groups: those with right AAD and TLE, those with left AAD and TLE, and a comparison group. Four tasks were administered: recognition of emotion from facial expressions, sentences describing emotion-laden situations, nonverbal sounds, and prosody.

RESULTS

Accuracy scores for each task and emotion were analysed, and no consistent overall effect of AAD on emotion recognition was found. However, some individual participants with AAD were significantly impaired at recognizing emotions, in both auditory and visual domains.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate that a minority of individuals with AAD have impairments in emotion recognition, but no evidence of specific impairments (e.g., visual or auditory) was found.