ABSTRACT

Accurately recognizing and responding to the emotions of others is essential for proper social communication and helps bind strong relationships that are particularly important for stroke survivors. Emotion recognition typically engages cortical areas that are predominantly right-lateralized including superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri – regions frequently impacted by right-hemisphere stroke. Since prior work already links right-hemisphere stroke to deficits in emotion recognition, this research aims to extend these findings to determine whether impaired emotion recognition after right-hemisphere stroke is associated with worse social well-being outcomes. Eighteen right-hemisphere stroke patients (≥6 months post-stroke) and 21 neurologically healthy controls completed a multimodal emotion recognition test (Geneva Emotion Recognition Test – Short) and reported engagement in social/non-social activities and levels of social support. Right-hemisphere stroke was associated with worse emotion recognition accuracy, though not all patients exhibited impairment. In line with hypotheses, emotion recognition impairments were associated with greater loss of social activities after stroke, an effect that could not be attributed to stroke severity or loss of non-social activities. Impairments were also linked to reduced patient-reported social support. Results implicate emotion recognition difficulties as a potential antecedent of social withdrawal after stroke and warrant future research to test emotion recognition training post-stroke.

摘要

准确识别和回应他人的情绪对于正确的社交沟通至关重要，并有助于建立牢固的关系，这对中风幸存者尤其重要。情绪识别通常涉及主要为右侧的皮质区域，包括颞上回和额下回，这些区域经常受到右半球中风的影响。由于之前的研究已经将右半球中风与情绪识别缺陷联系起来，本研究旨在扩展这些发现，以确定右半球中风后情绪识别受损是否与较差的社会福祉结果相关。18 名右半球中风患者（中风后≥6 个月）和 21 名神经健康对照者完成了多模式情绪识别测试（日内瓦情绪识别测试 - 简短），并报告了社交/非社交活动的参与度和社会支持水平。右半球中风与较差的情绪识别准确性相关，尽管并非所有患者都表现出损害。与假设一致，情绪识别障碍与中风后社交活动的丧失更多相关，这种影响不能归因于中风的严重程度或非社交活动的丧失。损害还与患者报告的社会支持减少有关。结果表明，情绪识别困难是中风后社交退缩的潜在前因，并有必要进行未来的研究来测试中风后的情绪识别训练。