Emotion recognition in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in a dynamic environment.

Objective: The aim of our study was to measure the ability of ALS patients to process dynamic facial expressions as compared to a control group of healthy subjects and to correlate this ability in ALS patients with neuropsychological, clinical and neurological measures of the disease.

Methods: Sixty-three ALS patients and 47 healthy controls were recruited. All the ALS patients also underwent i) the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test (GERT) in which ten actors express 14 types of dynamic emotions in brief video clips with audio, ii) the Edimburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS) test; iii) the ALS Functional Rating Scale Revised (ALSFRS-R) and iv) the Medical Research Council (MRC) for the evaluation of muscle strength. All the healthy subjects enrolled in the study underwent the GERT.

Results: The recognition of irritation and pleasure was significantly different between ALS patients and the control group. The amusement, despair, irritation, joy, sadness and surprise had been falsely recognized differently between the two groups. Specific ALS cognitive impairment was associated with bulbar-onset phenotype (OR = 14,3889; 95%CI = 3,96-52,16). No association was observed between false emotion recognition and cognitive impairment (F(1,60)=,56,971, p=,45,333). The number of categorical errors was significantly higher in the ALS patients than in the control group (27,66 ± 7,28 vs 17,72 ± 5,29; t = 8723; p = 0.001).

Conclusions: ALS patients show deficits in the dynamic processing of a wide range of emotions. These deficits are not necessarily associated with a decline in higher cognitive functions: this could therefore lead to an underestimation of the phenomenon.