Department for Neurosurgery, Epilepsy Center, Medical Center, University of Freiburg, Breisacher Str. 64, Freiburg 79106, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Seizure. 2022 Aug;100:95-102. doi: 10.1016/j.seizure.2022.06.018. Epub 2022 Jul 4.
Eye-movement patterns during facial emotion recognition are under-researched in patients with focal epilepsy (PWFE). Previous studies including other neurological patients indicate that bilateral mesiotemporal damage could be associated with impaired emotion recognition and abnormal eye-movement patterns.
The current study addresses the question whether PWFE, in whom fronto-(mesio-)temporal networks are often disturbed, also show abnormal eye-movement patterns during facial emotion recognition.
24 PWFE and a group of 29 healthy controls (HC) performed a facial emotion recognition task and a gender recognition task while eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. For this purpose, Areas of Interest (AOI) were defined in the presented faces: the eye region and the mouth region. In addition to the proportion of correctly recognized emotions, the following eye-tracking parameters were recorded: Relative fixation duration (FD)/fixation count (FC) in the mouth region/eye region (relative to the FD/FC on the entire screen).
PFWE showed an emotion recognition deficit compared to HC, whereas gender recognition performance did not differ between groups. In addition, PWFE showed significantly fewer and shorter fixations in the mouth region than HC, in both the emotion recognition task and the gender recognition task.
When looking at faces, PFWE show eye-movement patterns different from those of healthy controls. Behaviorally, PWFE are only impaired in emotion recognition. Hence, PWFE possibly scan facial regions that are relevant to successful emotion recognition more diffusely and less efficiently than healthy control subjects. Future studies should investigate the etiology of such abnormal eye-movement patterns in PWFE.
在局灶性癫痫患者（PWFE）中，对面部情绪识别期间的眼球运动模式的研究较少。先前的研究包括其他神经科患者表明，双侧颞叶中部损伤可能与情绪识别受损和眼球运动模式异常有关。
本研究旨在探讨额（中）颞网络经常受到干扰的 PWFE 是否在识别面部表情时也表现出异常的眼球运动模式。
24 名 PWFE 和 29 名健康对照组（HC）在进行面部情绪识别任务和性别识别任务时记录了眼球运动，使用眼动追踪器记录眼球运动。为此，在呈现的面部图像中定义了感兴趣区域（AOI）：眼部区域和嘴部区域。除了正确识别的情绪比例外，还记录了以下眼动追踪参数：嘴部区域/眼部区域的相对注视持续时间（FD）/注视次数（FC）（相对于整个屏幕的 FD/FC）。
与 HC 相比，PWFE 表现出情绪识别缺陷，而两组之间的性别识别性能没有差异。此外，PWFE 在情绪识别任务和性别识别任务中，嘴部区域的注视次数和持续时间明显少于 HC。
在观察面部时，PWFE 的眼球运动模式与健康对照组不同。行为上，PWFE 仅在情绪识别方面受损。因此，PWFE 可能比健康对照组更广泛且效率更低地扫描与成功情绪识别相关的面部区域。未来的研究应探讨 PWFE 中这种异常眼球运动模式的病因。
