Emotion recognition in patients with low-grade glioma before and after surgery

Abstract Purpose. Research on patients with low-grade gliomas (LGG) showed neurocognitive impairments in various domains. However, social cognition has barely been investigated, while it is acknowledged as an important neurocognitive domain. Facial emotion recognition is a vital aspect of social cognition, but whether emotion recognition is affected by LGG and/or resection, is unclear. Therefore, the aim was to investigate the effect of LGG and resection, by examining emotion recognition pre- and postoperatively. Additionally, the relationship between emotion recognition and general cognition and tumor location was investigated. Methods. A longitudinal study, in which 30 patients with LGG who underwent resective surgery were included and matched with 63 healthy control participants (HC). Emotion recognition was measured with the Facial Expressions of Emotion-Stimuli and Tests (FEEST). General cognition was measured with neuropsychological tests. Correlations, within-group and between-group comparisons were calculated. Results. Before surgery, patients performed significantly worse than HC on FEEST total (M=46.9, SD=5.4 vs. M=49.5, SD=4.9, p <0.05, d =0.52) and FEEST Anger (M=7.6, SD=1.9 vs. M=8.3, SD=1.5, p<0.05, d=0.43). Paired comparisons showed no significant differences between FEEST-scores before and post-surgery. No significant correlations with general cognition (memory) and tumor location were found. Conclusion. This study shows similar impairments in emotion recognition in patients with LGG before and after resection, which indicates that the tumor itself contributes significantly to social cognitive dysfunction and that surgery caused no additional deficit. Impairments were not related to general cognitive deficits or tumor location. Consequently, incorporating tests for emotion recognition into neuropsychological assessment of patients with LGG is important.