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The following is a summary of “Reduced eye gaze fixation during emotion recognition among patients with temporal lobe epilepsy,” published in the January 2024 issue of Neurology by Huang et al.

Researchers started a retrospective study to explore how eye-tracking (ET) patterns during dynamic facial expression tasks and the awareness of the social Interference Test (TASIT) reveal emotion recognition (ER) processes, aiming to identify ET indicators that enhance existing ER assessment tools.

They recruited 96 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and 88 HCs. All participants observed the dynamic facial expression task and TASIT, which included synchronized eye movement recording for ER (anger, disgust, happiness, or sadness), with documented ER accuracy. The analysis focused on the first fixation time, first fixation duration, dwell time, and fixation count.

The results showed ER impairment in TLE patients, particularly disgust (Z=−3.391; P=0.001) and sadness (Z=−3.145; P=0.002). TLE patients showed reduced fixation count (Z=−2.549; P=0.011) on the face and a significant decrease in fixation count rate (Z =−1.993; P=0.046). In the dynamic facial expression task, TLE patients focused less on the eyes, with decreased first fixation duration (Z=− 4.322; P=0.000), dwell time (Z=−4.083; P=0.000), and fixation count (Z=−3.699; P=0.000) on the eyes.

They concluded that ET reveals TLE patients’ ER impairment, with less eye focus and more mouth fixations, suggesting a compensatory strategy and ET’s potential as an ER assessment tool.

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-024-12202-w