Lifetime PTSD is associated with impaired emotion recognition in veterans and their offspring

Castro-Vale, Ivone; Severo, Mílton; Carvalho, Davide

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2019.112666

Cited by 14 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The PTSD group also misclassified neutral expressions most often as fearful (although overall accuracy was high). These findings are consistent with previous literature on impaired recognition of emotions in general for PTSD (Castro-Vale et al, 2020) and SSD (Pedrosa Gil et al, 2009). However, we did not find significant group differences with regard to gaze behavior.…”

Section: Emotion Processing In Trauma-related Disorderssupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Individuals with a diagnosis of PTSD are prone to make more mistakes in categorizing facial expressions, report higher expressive suppression, and score higher on alexithymia scales (Passardi et al, 2019). Lifetime PTSD was associated with impaired recognition of all seven basic emotions (Castro-Vale et al, 2020). Even though most research on emotion recognition deficits in MDD point toward a negativity bias (i.e., tendency to falsely categorize emotions more negatively, or focus more on negative information with subsequent problems of disengagement; e.g., Bodenschatz et al, 2019), some data show impairments across all basic expressions except sadness (Dalili et al, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The association between psychopathology, childhood trauma, and emotion processing.

Flechsenhar¹,

Seitz²,

Bertsch³

et al. 2024

Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy

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Objective: Childhood trauma is highly prevalent and can have a negative impact on the development of socioemotional processes resulting in a higher vulnerability for mental disorders in adulthood. Previous studies have associated the severity of childhood trauma with deficits in social functioning, such as a negative attention bias, suggesting altered social information processing as a mechanism underlying the association between childhood trauma and transdiagnostic psychopathologies. Method: In a cross-sectional setup with a total of 103 participants (26 with major depressive disorder, MDD; 24 with posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD; 22 with somatic symptom disorder, SDD; and 31 healthy volunteers, HV), this study applied eye tracking in an emotion recognition paradigm. Reaction times, accuracy, and gaze behavior were analyzed for 4 different facial expressions as a function of self-reported childhood trauma and diagnosis. The aim was to investigate to what extent emotion processing is associated with (a) childhood trauma, (b) psychopathology, and (c) respective interacting effects. Results: Patients showed higher reaction times and error rates overall in classifying emotions than HVs, especially for the recognition of anger and fear. Individuals with a diagnosis of PTSD and MDD were particularly slow in their response to these emotions. Higher scores of reported childhood trauma were associated with faster responses for classifying anger and fear and slower initiation of eye movements for SSD, MDD, and HVs for anger. Conclusion: These findings indicate that childhood trauma may contribute to attentional and information-processing biases relevant for social interaction. Identifying individual social deficits offers implications for tailored therapeutic interventions. Clinical Impact StatementPatients with mental disorders often experience different forms of social problems that affect interactions with others and personal well-being. Our study shows that recognizing emotions of anger and fear seem to be difficult to classify and respond to for patients with a history of childhood trauma. Identifying social abilities that are impaired across patients and considering aversive childhood experiences may help to adapt therapeutic approaches while at the same time focusing on ameliorating individual deficits.

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Section: Emotion Processing In Trauma-related Disorderssupporting

confidence: 93%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The association between psychopathology, childhood trauma, and emotion processing.

Flechsenhar¹,

Seitz²,

Bertsch³

et al. 2024

Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Veterans with PTSD have been found to maintain attention longest on fearful and disgusted facial expressions specifically (Armstrong et al, 2013). Veterans with lifetime combatrelated PTSD were found to have impaired emotion recognition accuracy for all seven emotions studied (Castro-Vale et al, 2020). Examining eye gaze specifically in women with PTSD due to childhood abuse, it has been found that direct eye gaze activates regions of the brain involved in an innate alarm system rather than regions more typically involved in processing social interactions in healthy controls-a finding consistent across emotion expression (Steuwe et al, 2014).…”

Section: Post-traumatic Stress Disordermentioning

confidence: 93%

The Eyes Have It: Psychotherapy in the Era of Masks

Mitzkovitz

Dowd

Cothran

et al. 2022

J Clin Psychol Med Settings

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Nonverbal communication is integral to the success of psychotherapy and facial expression is an important component of nonverbal communication. The SARS CoV-2 pandemic has caused alterations in how psychotherapy services are provided. In this paper, potential issues that may arise from conducting psychotherapy when both the patient and therapist are wearing masks are explored. These include higher likelihood of misidentifying facial expression, especially when expression is incongruent with body language, and when the lower face is more important for correct identification of emotion. These issues may be particularly problematic for patient populations for whom emotion recognition may be a problem at baseline, or for those more prone to biases in emotional recognition. Suggestions are made for therapists to consider when seeing patients in-person when masks are necessary.

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“…The present cross-sectional research is part of a larger study on the neurobiological inheritance of PTSD (e.g., [17]). This study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Health of Centro Hospitalar São João/Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (approval number: CES-138/08).…”

Section: Enrolment Of Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene (NR3C1) 9β SNP Is Associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

et al. 2021

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with glucocorticoid (GC) hypersensitivity. Although genetic factors account for 30–46% of the variance in PTSD, no associations have been found between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the GC receptor (GR) gene (NR3C1) and risk for this disorder. We studied the association of five SNPs in the GR gene (rs10052957, rs6189/rs6190, rs6195, rs41423247, and rs6198) and haplotypes with PTSD, in a group of Portuguese male war veterans (33 with lifetime PTSD, 28 without). To determine whether the 9β SNP (rs6198) was associated with chronically altered cortisol levels, we evaluated hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in a sample of 69 veterans’ offspring. The 9β variant (G allele) was significantly associated with lifetime PTSD under a dominant model of inheritance. The 9β variant was also significantly associated with severity of current PTSD symptoms. The haplotype analysis revealed an association between a common haplotype comprising the 9β risk allele and lifetime PTSD. Carriers of the 9β risk allele had significantly lower HCC than non-carriers. We found the 9β risk allele and a haplotype comprising the 9β risk allele of the GR gene to be associated with PTSD in veterans. This 9β risk allele was also associated with lower HCC in their offspring.

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Lifetime PTSD is associated with impaired emotion recognition in veterans and their offspring

Cited by 14 publications

References 63 publications

The association between psychopathology, childhood trauma, and emotion processing.

The association between psychopathology, childhood trauma, and emotion processing.

The Eyes Have It: Psychotherapy in the Era of Masks

The Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene (NR3C1) 9β SNP Is Associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

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