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Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions and Alexithymia in Patients with Chronic Facial Pain
(2018)
Objectives
Alexithymia, conceived as difficulties to identify emotions, is said to be related with several pain syndromes. This study examined the recognition of facially expressed emotions and its relation to alexithymia in subjects with chronic facial pain.
Methods
A total of 62 subjects were recruited, with n=20 patients with chronic facial pain and n=42 healthy controls. All subjects were tested for the recognition of facially expressed emotions (Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling Test (FEEL test). The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-26) was used for the diagnosis of alexithymia.
Results
Patients with chronic facial pain performed worse than controls at the FEEL task (p<.001) and showed higher total TAS scores (p<.001). This indicates the presence of alexithymia and facial emotion recognition deficits in the facial pain group.
Discussion
It was concluded from the results that both the recognition of facially expressed emotions, and the ability to identify and describe one’s own feelings (TAS), are restricted in chronic orofacial pain patients. This relationship is particularly important in the treatment of chronic facial pain, indicating that it should become part of the treatment in addition to the therapeutic key issues, to influence the quality of life of the affected patients positively.
Alexithymia, or a lack of emotional awareness, is prevalent in some chronic pain conditions and has been linked to poor recognition of others' emotions. Recognising others' emotions from their facial expression involves both emotional and motor processing, but the possible contribution of motor disruption has not been considered. It is possible that poor performance on emotional recognition tasks could reflect problems with emotional processing, motor processing or both. We hypothesised that people with chronic facial pain would be less accurate in recognising others' emotions from facial expressions, would be less accurate in a motor imagery task involving the face, and that performance on both tasks would be positively related. A convenience sample of 19 people (15 females) with chronic facial pain and 19 gender-matched controls participated. They undertook two tasks; in the first task, they identified the facial emotion presented in a photograph. In the second, they identified whether the person in the image had a facial feature pointed towards their left or right side, a well-recognised paradigm to induce implicit motor imagery. People with chronic facial pain performed worse than controls at both tasks (Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL) task P < 0·001; left/right judgment task P < 0·001). Participants who were more accurate at one task were also more accurate at the other, regardless of group (P < 0·001, r2 = 0·523). Participants with chronic facial pain were worse than controls at both the FEEL emotion recognition task and the left/right facial expression task and performance covaried within participants. We propose that disrupted motor processing may underpin or at least contribute to the difficulty that facial pain patients have in emotion recognition and that further research that tests this proposal is warranted.
Chronic facial pain has many of the clinical characteristics found in other persistent musculoskeletal conditions, such as low back and cervical pain syndromes. Unique to this condition, however, is that painful facial movements may result in rigidity or altered ability to demonstrate mimicry, defined as the natural tendency to adopt the behavioral expressions of other persons involved in the interaction. Loss of ability to communicate through emotional expression can lead to impaired processing of emotions and ultimately social isolation. Diminished quality and quantity of facial expression is associated with chronic face pain, tempromandibular dysfunction, facial asymmetries, and neurological disorders. This report provides a framework for assessment of impaired emotional processing and associated somatosensory alterations. Principles for management for chronic facial pain should include graded motor imagery, in addition to standard treatments of manual therapy, exercise, and patient education. A case study is provided which illustrates these principles.