Abstract

Background: Many stroke patients have significant difficulties recognizing facial expressions. This kind of impairment can have profound effect on social functioning.

Objectives: To assess the degree of difficulty of stroke patients in the recognition of facial emotional expressions and their possible relation with lesion laterality location, gender, injury severity, and functional capacity in activities of daily living.

Methods: An observational study of 48 patients admitted to the Brain Injury Unit of Aita Menni Hospital (Guipúzcoa) with a diagnosis of stroke. Patients were evaluated using the Emotion Recognition Scale for Patients with Schizophrenia (PERE), National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), Barthel Index, and FIM / FAM functional independence scale.

Results: Patients recognized 65.73% of the photographs. There were no significant differences in the recognition of emotions in patients with stroke in the right or left hemisphere or between male and female patients. There is a direct relationship between the degree of injury severity and the difficulty in the recognition of emotions. Conclusions: Stroke causes a severe difficulty in the ability to recognize emotions in faces. This difficulty seems to be positively related to stroke severity but not to lesion laterality or gender.