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The influence of brain radiotherapy on neurocognition is a major concern. Social cognition is a mental process in the meaning of social interaction and the recognition of facial emotion is a domain of social cognition. Thus, we aimed to investigate the early effect of whole brain radiotherapy on facial emotion recognition ability. Thirteen patients with various brain tumors in the study. Beck depression and anxiety inventory and the facial emotion recognition test by using a set of photographs were performed at the beginning and post radiotherapy. The severity of depression (16.40 ± 12.16 vs 04.00 ± 02.38 points) and anxiety (14.47 ± 11.96 vs 04.54 ± 03.30 points) were significantly higher in patients. The only significance according to facial emotion recognition rate between initial phase of patients and healthy controls was identifying neutral facial em otion (p = 0.002). The patients after brain radiotherapy had significantly better rate of recognizing fear facial emotions (p = 0.039). This study is the first that investigated the effects of cranial irradiation on facial emotion recognition ability and compares this ability with healthy controls. Interestingly, in the early phase the patients seem to be improved in fear facial emotion after brain radiotherapy without sparing cognition specific regions as hippocampus and frontal regions.

Objective: Clozapine and risperidone are used for treatment-resistant schizophrenia and known to improve the positive and negative symptoms. However, there are some conflicts about effects on social cognition, which is measured with facial emotion recognition ability. The impairments in facial emotion recognition ability have frequently been in different stages of the illness and might have negative influences on psychosocial functioning. In the present study, we aimed to examine clozapine and risperidone effects recognizing facial emotions in patient with treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Methods: Thirty-four patients were screened for the study, and 19 patients were included. All patients were evaluated with Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia, and Functional Remission of General Schizophrenia Scale at baseline and after 16-20 weeks of clozapine (n = 12) or risperidone (n = 7) treatment. Furthermore, the Facial Emotion Recognition Test was performed before and after treatment. The test included the photos of four male and four female models (totally 56 mixed photos) with happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgusted, and neutral facial expressions from Ekman and Friesen's catalog.Results: The mean dose of the index drug in clozapine group was 295.83 ± 103.26 mg/day. The mean positive (p = .002), negative (p = .050) general psychopathology (p = .002), and total score (p = .002) according to the PANSS were significantly improved after treatment. The mean dose of the index drug in risperidone group was 6.86 ± 1.57 mg/day. The mean positive symptom (p = .018) and total score (p = .041) were significantly improved after treatment but negative symptom scale (p = .396) and general psychopathology (p = .149) scores did not change. There were no significant differences between baseline and after treatment in clozapine and risperidone group according to the accuracy rate of facial emotion recognition expressions (p > .05 for each). At baseline phase, the patients were significantly impaired in recognizing disgusted faces in risperidone than those in clozapine group (p = .032) and it was significantly poorer after treatment with risperidone than with clozapine (p = .031). The patients responded significantly faster after the treatment to all facial emotions except for fearful faces (p = .355).Conclusions: Clozapine and risperidone were not found to have extensive effects on the ability to recognize facial emotions because of ineffectiveness to negative symptoms as in our study. We speculated that the higher dopaminergic receptor occupancy rate of risperidone in insular cortex than that of clozapine might be related with hypo-activation of insula that was associated with particular deficit in ability to recognize expressions of disgust in patients with schizophrenia. Impaired facial emotion recognition ability is present even in first-episode psychosis, which might be a trait marker in schizophrenia.ARTICLE HISTORY

ObjectivesAlthough, emotional cues like facial emotion expressions seem to be important in social interaction, there is limited specific training about emotional cues for psychology professions.AimsHere, we aimed to evaluate psychologist’, psychological counselors’ and psychiatrists’ ability of facial emotion recognition and compare these groups.MethodsOne hundred and forty-one master degree students of clinical psychology and 105 psychiatrists who identified themselves as psychopharmacologists were asked to perform facial emotion recognition test after filling out socio-demographic questionnaire. The facial emotion recognition test was constructed by using a set of photographs (happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised, disgusted, and neutral faces) from Ekman and Friesen's.ResultsPsychologists were significantly better in recognizing sad facial emotion than psychopharmacologists (6.23 ± 1.08 vs 5.80 ± 1.34 and P = 0.041). Psychological counselors were significantly better in recognizing sad facial emotion than psychopharmacologists (6.24 ± 1.01 vs 5.80 ± 1.34 and P = 0.054). Psychologists were significantly better in recognizing angry facial emotion than psychopharmacologists (6.54 ± 0.73 vs 6.08 ± 1.06 and P = 0.002). Psychological counselors were significantly better in recognizing angry facial emotion than psychopharmacologists (6.48 ± 0.73 vs 6.08 ± 1.06 and P = 0.14).ConclusionWe have revealed that the pyschologist and psychological counselors were more accurate in recognizing sad and angry facial emotions than psychopharmacologists. We considered that more accurate recognition of emotional cues may have important influences on patient doctor relationship. It would be valuable to investigate how these differences or training the ability of facial emotion recognition would affect the quality of patient–clinician interaction.