Facial mimicry, facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in post-traumatic stress disorder

Spatio-Temporal Image-Based Encoded Atlases for EEG Emotion Recognition

Emotion recognition plays an essential role in human-human interaction since it is a key to understanding the emotional states and reactions of human beings when they are subject to events and engagements in everyday life. Moving towards human-computer interaction, the study of emotions becomes fundamental because it is at the basis of the design of advanced systems to support a broad spectrum of application areas, including forensic, rehabilitative, educational, and many others. An effective method for discriminating emotions is based on ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) data analysis, which is used as input for classification systems. Collecting brain signals on several channels and for a wide range of emotions produces cumbersome datasets that are hard to manage, transmit, and use in varied applications. In this context, the paper introduces the Empátheia system, which explores a different EEG representation by encoding EEG signals into images prior to their classification. In particular, the proposed system extracts spatio-temporal image encodings, or atlases, from EEG data through the Processing and transfeR of Interaction States and Mappings through Image-based eNcoding (PRISMIN) framework, thus obtaining a compact representation of the input signals. The atlases are then classified through the Empátheia architecture, which comprises branches based on convolutional, recurrent, and transformer models designed and tuned to capture the spatial and temporal aspects of emotions. Extensive experiments were conducted on the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) Emotion EEG Dataset (SEED) public dataset, where the proposed system significantly reduced its size while retaining high performance. The results obtained highlight the effectiveness of the proposed approach and suggest new avenues for data representation in emotion recognition from EEG signals.

Toddlers' affective responses to sociomoral scenes: Insights from physiological measures

A growing literature suggests that preverbal infants are sensitive to sociomoral scenes and prefer prosocial agents over antisocial agents. It remains unclear, however, whether and how emotional processes are implicated in infants' responses to prosocial/antisocial actions. Although a recent study found that infants and toddlers showed more positive facial expressions after viewing helping (vs. hindering) events, these findings were based on naïve coder ratings of facial activity; furthermore, effect sizes were small. The current studies examined 18- and 24-month-old toddlers' real-time reactivity to helping and hindering interactions using three physiological measures of emotion-related processes. At 18 months, activity in facial musculature involved in smiling/frowning was explored via facial electromyography (EMG). At 24 months, stress (sweat) was explored via electrodermal activity (EDA). At both ages, arousal was explored via pupillometry. Behaviorally, infants showed no preferences for the helper over the hinderer across age groups. EMG analyses revealed that 18-month-olds showed higher corrugator activity (more frowning) during hindering (vs. helping) actions, followed by lower corrugator activity (less frowning) after hindering (vs. helping) actions finished. These findings suggest that antisocial actions elicited negativity, perhaps followed by brief disengagement. EDA analyses revealed no significant event-related differences. Pupillometry analyses revealed that both 18- and 24-month-olds' pupils were smaller after viewing hindering (vs. helping), replicating recent evidence with 5-month-olds and suggesting that toddlers also show less arousal following hindering than following helping. Together, these results provide new evidence with respect to whether and how arousal/affective processes are involved when infants process sociomoral scenarios.

Risk factors for post-COVID cognitive dysfunctions: the impact of psychosocial vulnerability

BACKGROUND

Cognitive dysfunction is a well-established manifestation of the post-COVID syndrome. Psychological vulnerability to stressors can modify disease trajectories, causing long-term risk for negative outcomes. Nonetheless, how premorbid risk factors and response to stressor affect neuropsychological changes is still incompletely understood. In this study, we explored the impact of psychosocial variables on cognitive functioning in a post-COVID sample.

METHODS

All subjects were submitted to a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and an assessment of perceived loneliness, post-traumatic stress, and changes in anxiety and depression levels. A social vulnerability index was also calculated. The set of psycho-social variables was reduced to two Principal Component Analysis (PCA) components: distress and isolation.

RESULTS

Forty-five percent of individuals showed cognitive impairments, with predominant memory and executive deficits. Post-traumatic stress disorder was clinically relevant in 44% of the sample. Social vulnerability scores of the sample were comparable to those of general population. The individual performance in learning and response initiation/suppression was directly related to distress component, encasing anxiety, stress, and depression measures.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest that psychosocial assessment of post-COVID patients can detect fragile individuals at risk of cognitive impairments. Dedicated psychological support services may play a useful role in the prevention of post-COVID cognitive dysfunction.

Markers of limbic system damage following SARS-CoV-2 infection

Alterations of the limbic system may be present in the chronic phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our aim was to study the long-term impact of this disease on limbic system-related behaviour and its associated brain functional connectivity, according to the severity of respiratory symptoms in the acute phase. To this end, we investigated the multimodal emotion recognition abilities of 105 patients from the Geneva COVID-COG Cohort 223 days on average after SARS-CoV-2 infection (diagnosed between March 2020 and May 2021), dividing them into three groups (severe, moderate or mild) according to respiratory symptom severity in the acute phase. We used multiple regressions and partial least squares correlation analyses to investigate the relationships between emotion recognition, olfaction, cognition, neuropsychiatric symptoms and functional brain networks. Six to 9 months following SARS-CoV-2 infection, moderate patients exhibited poorer recognition abilities than mild patients for expressions of fear (P = 0.03 corrected), as did severe patients for disgust (P = 0.04 corrected) and irritation (P < 0.01 corrected). In the whole cohort, these performances were associated with decreased episodic memory and anosmia, but not with depressive symptoms, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Neuroimaging revealed a positive contribution of functional connectivity, notably between the cerebellum and the default mode, somatosensory motor and salience/ventral attention networks. These results highlight the long-term consequences of SARS-Cov-2 infection on the limbic system at both the behavioural and neuroimaging levels.

The association of negative mood with automatic and effortful facial expression mimicry

The natural process of mimicking the facial expressions of others is well established, as are the deficits in this reflexive behavior for individuals with clinical disorders such as depression. This study examines the extent of this deficit in non-clinical individuals with high transient negative mood, and whether it extends to both automatic and effortful emotion expression behavior. One hundred and thirty-six participants were shown happy, sad, and neutral faces, while electromyography (EMG) recorded facial muscle responses. Automatic (reflexive) mimicry was assessed while participants simply viewed facially expressive photographs, while effortful mimicry was monitored when individuals were told to intentionally copy the expressions in the photographs. Results indicated that high levels of negative mood were primarily associated with deficits in effortful mimicry of happy expressions, although some similar evidence was found in automatic mimicry of happy faces. Surprisingly, there were also ties between negative moods and inaccuracies in effortful mimicry of sad expressions (but not automatic mimicry). Inaccurate automatic and effortful mimicry were also tied with lower self-reported social support and greater loneliness. These results indicate that even in healthy individuals, transient and minor changes in negative mood are tied to deficiencies in facial mimicry at both the automatic and effortful level.

Impact of self adaptive-elephant herding optimization towards neural network for facial emotion recognition

FACIAL expression is one of the most efficient, universal and fundamental indicators to identify their emotions and intentions in humans. Various experiments have already been performed on automatic Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) owing to useful significance in medical diagnosis, stress monitoring for drivers, sociable robots, and other human-computer interface devices. Here, this proposed framework consists of two processes namely; “(i) proposed feature extraction and (ii) classification”. Here, a major novelty relies in the initial phase (i.e. feature extraction phase), where the Proposed Local Vector Pattern (Proposed- LVP) based features are extracted. In addition to the proposed-LVP, the other Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) based features are also extracted. Besides, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method is used for reducing the dimension of the features. Further, they are subjected to classification process, where Optimized Neural Network (NN) is used. More particularly, a new Improved Elephant Herding Optimization (EHO) model termed as Self Adaptive-EHO (SA-EHO) is used to train the NN model via selecting the optimal weights. At last, the proposed work performance is computed over the other traditional systems with respect to the positive measures like “accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and precision”; negative measures like “False Positive Rate (FPR), False Negative Rate (FNR) and False Discovery Rate (FDR)”; other measures like “Negative Predictive Value (NPV), F1-score and Matthew’s Correlation Coefficient (MCC)”, respectively.

Alexithymia is a mediating factor in the relationship between adult attachment and severity of depression and social anxiety

BACKGROUND

Major depressive disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are commonly occurring conditions, either alone or together (MDD-SAD). Recent research linked insecure attachment and alexithymia to MDD and/or SAD, indicating that the way affected individuals relate interpersonally and their ability to identify and communicate emotions are pertinent issues. The current study investigated the mediating role of alexithymia in the relationship between insecure attachment and severity of MDD and SAD symptoms.

METHOD

Using the SCID-I, participants (N=159) were identified as MDD-only (n=43), MDD-SAD (n=56), or a healthy control (n=60). Participants completed measures of adult attachment, depression, social anxiety and alexithymia (defined as difficulty identifying and describing feelings). A two-step mediation analysis approach recommended by Shrout and Bolger determined if alexithymia mediates the relationship between attachment-depression and attachment-social anxiety.

RESULTS

While alexithymia was high in MDD-only and MDD-SAD groups, individuals with MDD-SAD had significantly greater difficulty describing feelings. Alexithymia was a full mediator between attachment avoidance and depression, but only a partial mediator between attachment anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, alexithymia was a partial mediator for both attachment dimensions and social anxiety.

LIMITATIONS

Causal inferences regarding insecure attachment, alexithymia, and MDD and SAD cannot be assumed given the cross-sectional data. The 'externally oriented thinking' component in alexithymia was also excluded from analyses due to low reliability.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest emotional awareness and expression play a role in the illness severity for MDD and SAD-particularly in those with high attachment avoidance, offering a possible target for treatment and prevention strategies.

Alexithymia and Facial Mimicry in Response to Infant and Adult Affect-Expressive Faces

Facial mimicry is the automatic tendency to imitate facial expressions of emotions. Alexithymia is associated with a reduced facial mimicry ability to affect expressions of adults. There is evidence that the baby schema may influence this process. In this study it was tested experimentally whether facial mimicry of the alexithymic group (AG) is different from the control group (CG) in response to dynamic facial affect expressions of children and adults. A multi-method approach (20-point Toronto Alexithymia Scale and Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia) was used for assessing levels of alexithymia. From 3503 initial data sets, two groups of 38 high and low alexithymic individuals without relevant mental or physical diseases were matched regarding age, gender, and education. Facial mimicry was induced by presentation of naturalistic affect-expressive video sequences (fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and joy) taken from validated sets of faces from adults (Averaged Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces) and children (Picture-Set of Young Children's Affective Facial Expressions). The videos started with a neutral face and reached maximum affect expression within 2 s. The responses of the groups were measured by facial electromyographic activity (fEMG) of corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscles. Differences in fEMG response (4000 ms) were tested in a variance analytical model. There was one significant main effect for the factor emotion and four interaction effects for the factors group × age, muscle × age, muscle × emotion, and for the triple interaction muscle × age × emotion. The participants of AG showed a decreased fEMG activity in response to the presented faces of adults compared to the CG but not for the faces of children. The affect-expressive faces of children induced enhanced zygomatic and reduced corrugator muscle activity in both groups. Despite existing deficits in the facial mimicry of alexithymic persons, affect-expressive faces of children seem to trigger a stronger positive emotional involvement even in the AG.

Further Support for the Psychometric Properties of the Farsi Version of Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire

Alexithymia is defined as the lack of words to describe emotions and is associated with different psychopathologies. Various tools have been developed for measuring alexithymia; each has its limitations. A new questionnaire, Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ), was developed to simultaneously assess positive and negative dimensions. Validation of such a tool in different cultures allows cross-cultural health psychology studies and facilitates knowledge transfer in the field. We aimed to examine the psychometric features of the PAQ in the Farsi-speaking population in Iran. Four-hundred-twenty-nine university students were asked to complete the PAQ, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ). Concurrent validity, discriminant validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability and factor structure were investigated. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a five-factor model identical to the original questionnaire. The questionnaire indicated good internal consistency (0.82 < α < 0.94). Test-retest reliability was acceptable for all subscales. The correlations between PAQ and its subscales with BDI-II, BAI, and TAS, and expression suppression subscale of ERQ were strong for concurrent validity. Concerning the discriminant validity, PAQ and its subscales were not correlated with reappraisal subscales of ERQ. The present findings suggest that the Farsi version of PAQ has strong psychometric properties and is appropriate for use in the Farsi-speaking population.

Associations Between Mental Health, Interoception, Psychological Flexibility, and Self-as-Context, as Predictors for Alexithymia: A Deep Artificial Neural Network Approach

Background: Alexithymia is a personality trait which is characterized by an inability to identify and describe conscious emotions of oneself and others.

Aim: The present study aimed to determine whether various measures of mental health, interoception, psychological flexibility, and self-as-context, predicted through linear associations alexithymia as an outcome. This also included relevant mediators and non-linear predictors identified for particular sub-groups of participants through cluster analyses of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) output.

Methodology: Two hundred and thirty participants completed an online survey which included the following questionnaires: Toronto alexithymia scale; Acceptance and Action Questionnaire 2 (AQQII); Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS-SF), Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale 21 (DAS21); Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA); and the Self-as-Context (SAC) scale. A stepwise backwards linear regression and mediation analysis were performed, as well as a cluster analysis of the non-linear ANN upper hidden layer output.

Results: Higher levels of alexithymia were associated with increased psychological inflexibility, lower positive affect scores, and lower interoception for the subscales of “not distracting” and “attention regulation.” SAC mediated the relation between emotional regulation and total alexithymia. The ANNs accounted for more of the variance than the linear regressions, and were able to identify complex and varied patterns within the participant subgroupings.

Conclusion: The findings were discussed within the context of developing a SAC processed-based therapeutic model for alexithymia, where it is suggested that alexithymia is a complex and multi-faceted condition, which requires a similarly complex, and process-based approach to accurately diagnose and treat this condition.

Identifying Frail Populations for Disease Risk Prediction and Intervention Planning in the Covid-19 Era: A Focus on Social Isolation and Vulnerability

The early identification of fragile populations in the Covid-19 era would help governments to allocate resources and plan strategies to contain consequences of the pandemic. Beyond frailty, social vulnerability to environmental stressors, such as the social distancing enforced to reduce the SARS-CoV2 contagion, can modify long-term disease risk and induce health status changes in the general population. We assessed frailty and social vulnerability indices in 1,258 Italian residents during the first lockdown phase via an on-line survey. We compared indices taking into account age categories and gender. While frailty showed a linear increase with age and was greater in females than in males, social vulnerability was higher in young adults and elders compared to middle aged and older adults, and in males than females. Both frailty and social vulnerability contributed in explaining the individual perception of the impact of Covid-19 emergency on health, which was further influenced by proactive attitudes/behaviors and social isolation. Social isolation and loneliness following the Covid-19 outbreak may exert dramatic psychosocial effects in the general population. The early detection of vulnerable categories, at risk to become ill and develop long-lasting health status changes, would help to prevent consequences on general well-being by allocating resources to targeted interventions managing psychosocial distress and increasing young adults and elderly resilience toward the post-Covid-19 crisis.

Are you angry at me? Negative interpretations of neutral facial expressions are linked to child maltreatment but not to posttraumatic stress disorder

Background: Individuals with a high prevalence of child maltreatment, e.g. those with borderline personality disorder, tend to see neutral facial expressions as negative. Objective: Our aim was to assess whether this bias is present in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and whether it is linked to child maltreatment. Methods: Thirty-nine PTSD participants, 44 traumatized and 35 non-traumatized healthy controls watched 300 one-second movies showing 30 neutral and 270 emotional facial expressions, and indicated whether they interpreted each as a neutral or as one of nine emotional expressions. Results: PTSD individuals did not perform differently than the two control groups in the recognition and interpretation of neutral facial expressions (p's < .300). Higher levels of childhood sexual and emotional abuse, and physical neglect were linked to more interpretations of neutral facial expressions as contempt (p's < .043), and (for sexual abuse and physical neglect) to more interpretations of neutral facial expressions as anger (p's < .014). Comparisons of statistical model fits suggested that childhood sexual abuse was the most relevant predictor of recognition accuracy in our sample. Alexithymia, state dissociation, interpersonal trauma, and number of experienced trauma types were not associated with deficits in the interpretation of neutral expressions. Conclusions: Child maltreatment, especially sexual abuse, may shape the interpretation of neutral facial expressions. Future research should explore whether the observed biases extend to real-life situations. If so, therapists might improve the therapeutic relationship with patients with a history of child maltreatment by paying more attention to their own non-verbal communication and their patients' responses to it. Furthermore, similarly to individuals with high depressive and high social anxiety symptoms, facial expression recognition training might counteract negativity bias in individuals with a history of childhood (sexual and emotional) abuse, and (physical) neglect.