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Introduction Bipolar disorder is a common chronic psychiatric disorder, marked by the severity and frequency of mood episodes and their impact on the psychosocial functioning of these patients. Even during inter-critical periods, these patients’ cognitive functions are altered. Patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder, by definition, have problems with emotional regulation. However, it remains uncertain whether these patients also have a deficit in processing emotions of others. The main objective was to assess social cognition (recognition of facial emotions) in euthymic bipolar subjects by comparing them to a control group. Methodology This is a transversal case-witness study, conducted in consultation with the post-treatment, of 30 euthymic bipolar patients and 30 healthy volunteers matched for age, sex and educational level, with the help of a questionnaire targeting socio-demographic and clinical data, as well as a facial expression recognition test to measure social cognition. Results Our study showed that bipolar patients had deficits in social cognition compared to the volunteers’ group. Bipolar patients have more difficulties than healthy subjects to recognize facial emotions of fear, anger and disgust, and assign intentions to others from images. These deficits are even more accentuated in the early onset forms. Conclusion This study shows a disturbance of perception of emotions in bipolar patients. These cognitive deficits could participate in behavioral and social disorders present in bipolar disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The impairment of facial emotion recognition (FER) among patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) is a significant feature of the illness. Childhood trauma (CT) is reported with a high prevalence in SCZ and is considered one of its risk factors. Objectives To investigate the relationship between FER and CT in SCZ. Methods Fifty-eight outpatients with stable SCZ completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire retrospectively assessing five types of childhood trauma (emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect). They also completed a newly developed and validated FER task constructed from photographs of the face of a famous Tunisian actress and evaluating the ability to correctly identify Ekman's six basic facial emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise). Results Patients with higher scores of CT performed significantly worse in FER task. Our results suggest that the presence of sexual abuse is specifically correlated to a poor identification of anger ( P = 0.02) and disgust ( P = 0.03) while the presence of emotional abuse and physical neglect are correlated to a poor identification of happiness and sadness. Conclusions CT may represent one of the causes of the FER deficits in schizophrenia. Further studies are necessary to confirm the link between specific kinds of childhood trauma and deficits in the recognition of discrete emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) show impairments in many social cognition domains including facial emotion recognition (FER). The existence of a relationship association between FER and neurcognitive functioning (NF) remains uncertain. Objectives To investigate the association between ToM functioning and neurocognitive functioning in SCZ. Methods FER was evaluated in 58 patients with stable schizophrenia with a newly validated FER task constructed from photographs of the face of a famous Tunisian actress representing the Ekman's six basic emotions. They also completed a neurocognitive battery comprising the following tests: the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test–Revised (HVLT-R), the Letter Digit Substitution Test (LDST), the Stroop Test (ST), the “Double Barrage” of Zazzo (DBZ), the Modified Card Sorting Test (MCST), Verbal Fluency (VF), the Trail Making Test-Part A (TMT-A) and the Digit Span (DS). Results Patients who performed better in the FER task had better performance in the VF task ( P = 0.001) and in the immediate recall of the HVLT-R ( P = 0.021). No correlations were found with the other neurocognitive tests. Conclusions Our results suggest that FER represents an autonomous cognitive function which does not necessarily require good NF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Existing research shows that individuals with schizophrenia (SCZ) show substantial deficits in social cognitive domains, including facial emotion recognition (FER), empathy, and Theory of Mind (ToM). Their exact relationship with the different dimensions included in the “Clinician- Rated Dimensions of Psychosis Symptom Severity” of the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) remains unexplored. Objectives To investigate the relationship between different social cognition dimensions and the dimensions of psychosis included in the DSM-5. Methods Fifty-eight outpatients with stable SCZ completed the Intention-Inferencing Task (IIT), a non-verbal ToM task and the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE). They also completed a newly developed and validated FER task constructed from photographs of the face of a famous Tunisian actress and evaluating the ability to correctly identify Ekman's six basic facial emotions. The clinician-rated dimensions of psychosis symptom severity was used to evaluate 8 dimensions of psychosis. Results The patients presenting higher cognitive empathy capacities had less present abnormal psychomotor behaviour scores ( P = 0.05). Higher levels of affective empathy were correlated to lower present delusions score ( P = 0.037). Better scores in the IIT were correlated to less present negative scores ( P = 0.013) and less impaired cognition scores ( P = 0.009). FER task score didn’t correlated with any clinical dimension. Conclusions Our results suggest the existence of specific relationships between social cognition dimensions and psychosis dimensions. Further studies are needed to confirm these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]