Freeman Clara R, Wiers Corinde E, Sloan Matthew E, Zehra Amna, Ramirez Veronica, Wang Gene-Jack, Volkow Nora D
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2018 Jul 5. doi: 10.1111/acer.13802.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been associated with impairments in cognitive and emotional function, including difficulty identifying emotional facial expressions. However, it is unclear whether these deficits are associated with alcohol consumption or related anxious and depressive symptoms.
We compared the recognition of emotional faces expressing happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust in 19 AUD participants and 19 healthy volunteers using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Emotion Recognition Task. We analyzed group differences in response latency, accuracy, and misidentification patterns (as defined by the tendency to mislabel facial expressions as exhibiting specific emotions). To assess whether misidentification patterns were associated with drinking severity, we also examined associations with alcohol consumption over the past 90 days.
There were no differences in response latency or accuracy between groups. However, there were group differences in misidentification patterns. While controls tended to misidentify emotional expressions as happy, those with AUD tended to misidentify expressions as angry or disgusted. In AUD participants, the degree to which individuals were biased toward anger or disgust was positively correlated with the number of drinks they consumed in the past 90 days but was not associated with depression or anxiety scores.
Our findings suggest that individuals with AUD have a bias toward misidentifying emotional facial expressions as hostile, which is not mediated by associated mood changes. This provides further evidence of disrupted social cognition in AUD.
酒精使用障碍（AUD）与认知和情绪功能受损有关，包括难以识别情绪性面部表情。然而，尚不清楚这些缺陷是否与饮酒量或相关的焦虑和抑郁症状有关。
我们使用剑桥神经心理测试自动成套工具情绪识别任务，比较了19名酒精使用障碍参与者和19名健康志愿者对表达快乐、惊讶、悲伤、恐惧、愤怒和厌恶的情绪性面孔的识别情况。我们分析了两组在反应潜伏期、准确性和错误识别模式（定义为将面部表情错误标记为表现出特定情绪的倾向）方面的差异。为了评估错误识别模式是否与饮酒严重程度相关，我们还研究了与过去90天饮酒量的关联。
两组在反应潜伏期或准确性方面没有差异。然而，在错误识别模式上存在组间差异。对照组倾向于将情绪表情错误识别为快乐的表情，而酒精使用障碍患者则倾向于将表情错误识别为愤怒或厌恶的表情。在酒精使用障碍参与者中，个体对愤怒或厌恶的偏向程度与他们在过去90天内的饮酒量呈正相关，但与抑郁或焦虑评分无关。
我们的研究结果表明，酒精使用障碍患者存在将情绪性面部表情错误识别为敌意表情的偏向，这并非由相关的情绪变化介导。这为酒精使用障碍中社会认知受损提供了进一步的证据。
