Pharmacopsychiatry 2011; 21 - A46
DOI: 10.1055/s-0031-1292487

Impairment of facial emotion recognition in temporomandibular disorder

J Haas 1, V Busch 1, P Eichhammer 1
  • 1Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Germany

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate emotional processing in temporomandibular disorder (TMD) reflected in facial emotion recognition (FER). As deficits in FER were suggested previously as general feature of somatoform disorders (SFD) [1], we searched for analogies between TMD and SFD trying to shed light on the etiology of TMD. Methods: Twenty patients with TMD and the same number of age, sex and education matched healthy controls were recruited to be measured with the Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL) Test of FER, the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-26), the 21-item Hamilton Depression Ration Scale (HAMD) and the German Pain Questionnaire (the latter only for patients). Results: Patients had a significant lower Total-FEEL-Score (p = 0.021) compared to the controls, rated themselves significantly more alexithymic in the TAS-26 (p = 0.003) and were rated significantly more depressive in the HAMD (p > 0.001). However in the correlation analyses with FER only the association with pain related complaints showed a significant result (p = 0.03). Conclusion: Impaired FER detected in patients with TMD may give hints of possible etiologic proximities of TMD to SFD having in mind a common deficit in central emotional processing reflected in a strong divergence between subjective complaints and objective pathology [2]. References: [1] Pedrosa Gil F et al, Depress Anxiety 2009; 26: 26–33. [2] Ohrbach R et al, Pain 1998; 74: 315–26