Depression and Facial Identity Recognition Abilities in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis

Cognitive and emotional disorders are often encountered in multiple sclerosis (MS) cases: depressive and bipolar disorders are twice as frequent as in general population. Cognitive disorders, (particularly attention and dysexecutive disorders), appear in early stages of the disease\'s evolution, in cases of lightly or moderately disabled patients, with a recent evolution, with a \"minor\" form of the disease, even in Clinically Isolated Syndromes (CIS). Emotional disturbances are essentially linked to mood disorders of depression-type. Last ten years, emotional processing in multiple sclerosis cases was investigated in various trials, especially regarding the recognition of facial and emotional expressions. These studies reported data, supporting an impairment of the perception of emotion, particularly those with negative valence. The objective of this study is to investigate the link between recognition of facial and emotional expressions and depression in multiple sclerosis cases.