Department of Psychology, University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain.
Department of Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Pain Med. 2021 Jul 25;22(7):1619-1629. doi: 10.1093/pm/pnab024.
The ability to accurately identify facial expressions of emotions is crucial in human interaction. Although a previous study suggested deficient emotional face recognition in patients with fibromyalgia, not much is known about the origin of this impairment. Against this background, the present study investigated the role of executive functions. Executive functions refer to cognitive control mechanisms enabling implementation and coordination of basic mental operations. Deficits in this domain are prevalent in fibromyalgia.
Fifty-two fibromyalgia patients and thirty-two healthy individuals completed the Ekman-60 Faces Test, which requires classification of facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. They also completed eight tasks assessing the executive function components of shifting, updating, and inhibition. Effects of comorbid depression and anxiety disorders, as well as medication use, were tested in stratified analyses of patient subgroups.
Patients made more errors overall than controls in classifying the emotional expressions. Moreover, their recognition accuracy correlated positively with performance on most of the executive function tasks. Emotion recognition did not vary as a function of comorbid psychiatric disorders or medication use.
The study supports impaired facial emotion recognition in fibromyalgia, which may contribute to the interaction problems and poor social functioning characterizing this condition. Facial emotion recognition is regarded as a complex process, which may be particularly reliant on efficient coordination of various basic operations by executive functions. As such, the correlations between cognitive task performance and recognition accuracy suggest that deficits in higher cognitive functions underlie impaired emotional communication in fibromyalgia.
准确识别面部表情的能力在人际互动中至关重要。尽管先前的研究表明纤维肌痛患者的情绪面孔识别能力存在缺陷，但对于这种损伤的起源知之甚少。在此背景下，本研究探讨了执行功能的作用。执行功能是指认知控制机制，能够实现和协调基本心理操作。该领域的缺陷在纤维肌痛中很常见。
52 名纤维肌痛患者和 32 名健康个体完成了 Ekman-60 面孔测试，该测试要求对快乐、悲伤、愤怒、恐惧、惊讶和厌恶的面部表情进行分类。他们还完成了八项任务，评估了转换、更新和抑制的执行功能成分。在对患者亚组的分层分析中，测试了共病抑郁和焦虑障碍以及药物使用的影响。
患者在分类情绪表达方面的错误总数多于对照组。此外，他们的识别准确率与大多数执行功能任务的表现呈正相关。情绪识别不受共病精神障碍或药物使用的影响。
该研究支持纤维肌痛患者存在面部情绪识别障碍，这可能导致该疾病的互动问题和社交功能不良。面部情绪识别被认为是一个复杂的过程，可能特别依赖于执行功能对各种基本操作的有效协调。因此，认知任务表现与识别准确率之间的相关性表明，纤维肌痛患者的情绪交流障碍源于较高认知功能的缺陷。
