Facial Emotion Recognition and Executive Functions in Insomnia Disorder: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Background: Clinical and experimental findings suggest that insomnia is associated with changes in emotional processing and impairments in cognitive functioning. In the present study, we investigate the relationship between facial emotion recognition and executive functioning among individuals with insomnia as well as healthy controls. Method: A total of 11 individuals (mean age 31.3 ± 9.4) diagnosed with insomnia disorder and 15 control participants (mean age 24.8 ± 4.6) took part in the study. Participants responded to a facial emotion recognition task which presented them with static and dynamic stimuli, and were evaluated with regard to cognition, sleep, and mood. Results: Compared to controls, we found that participants with insomnia performed worse in the recognition of the facial emotion of fear (p = 0.001;η 2 p = 0.549; β = 0.999) and had lower scores in tests of verbal comprehension and perceptual organization (104.00 vs. 115.00, U = 135.5; p = 0.004; Cohen's, 2013 d = 1.281). We also found a relationship between facial emotion recognition and performance in cognitive tests, such as those related to perceptual organization, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Conclusion: Results suggest that participants with insomnia may present some impairment in executive functions as well as in the recognition of facial emotions with negative valences (fear and sadness).

Neurophysiological and behavioral effects of multisession prefrontal tDCS and concurrent cognitive remediation training in patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): A double-blind, randomized controlled fNIRS study

“…In addition, we showed that social communication, which was enhanced by the treatment, was significantly associated with emotion recognition, an essential skill for social interaction that previous studies have shown is deficient in individuals with ASD [4,60]. Notably, CF is associated with emotional recognition in healthy children [61] as well as in people with ASD [17], as emotion recognition has been shown to require flexible reasoning strategies in response to a situation [62]. In other words, our results may imply that tDCS with left dlPFC cathode placement and right supraorbital region anode placement and concurrent "cold" EF cognitive remediation training may promote flexible problem solving.…”

Hippocampal atrophy in neurofunctional subfields in insomnia individuals

“…Numerous studies have confirmed that sleep loss alters normal affective processing and biased perception, memory, and emotions toward negative aspects of experience. For example, de Almondes et al reported dysfunction of executive function and facial emotion recognition of negative emotions (fear and sadness) in patients with insomnia ( 26 ). Kyle et al found that patients with insomnia had a significantly lower ability to identify the emotional intensity of sadness and fearful expressions than good sleepers ( 27 ).…”

Facial Emotion Recognition Deficit in Children with Moderate/Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea

“…Future studies testing more categories of basic emotions (e.g., anger, fear and surprise) and complex emotions (e.g., shame, guilt and pride) may provide more comprehensive insights into the emotion recognition performance of children with SDB. The current investigation only used the static expressions, however, the processing of dynamic expressions might be different from that of static emotions, as previous research indicated [ 58 ]. It would be interesting to explore the recognition performance of dynamic emotions in the future.…”