The role of sub-cortical brain structures in emotion recognition

Primary objective: This study investigated the role of sub-cortical brain structures in emotion recognition. Methods and procedures: Fourteen patients (eight left, six right) with sub-cortical brain damage (SS) and 14 matched healthy volunteers (HV) were recruited. A brief neuropsychological battery was administered to measure working memory, visual inattention, Stroop effect and visual organization. A facial and prosodic emotion recognition battery previously developed was used. Results: SS patients were generally impaired on emotion recognition, with the exception of facial emotion discrimination and tasks involving happy expressions, relative to HV. Preliminary analyses also showed no statistical difference between patients with left- and right-sub-cortical brain damage in terms of emotion recognition. Conclusions: The findings provide further support for the role of sub-cortical brain structures (and the damage thereof) as well as probable frontal-limbic neural networks in recognizing basic emotions.