Facial Emotion Recognition and Faux Pas Interpretation in Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis ( MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system leading to physical and cognitive disability. The impact of the disease on social cognition has only come to light quite recently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the social cognition abilities of MS patients and their links with characteristics of the disease, such as physical disability, cognitive impairment and disease duration. The performances of a group of 64 MS patients were compared with that of 30 matched healthy individuals in facial emotion recognition and Faux Pas tasks as well as on a battery of standardized neuropsychological tests. The MS patients performed worse than the control group in the recognition of the expressions of fear and anger and in the interpretation of faux pas. The impairment in social cognition increased with overall disease course. Executive impairment did not correlate with the performance in the social cognition tests. Our results show that emotional impairment is observed at early stages of the disease in the absence of cognitive dysfunction, even if social cognition abilities worsen with the progression of MS. These data highlight the need to attempt to identify these impairments in clinical practice.