Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (Mar 2019)
3477 Impaired emotion recognition accuracy after right-hemisphere stroke
Abstract
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Every year, approximately 800,000 Americans suffer a stroke. Supportive social environments are recognized as an important factor contributing to successful stroke recovery, yet, stroke lesions can affect brain areas important for socioemotional functioning, which could impair a patient’s ability to maintain their social relationships. Specifically, emotion recognition, a fundamental socioemotional skill, is predominantly right-lateralized and may be impacted by right-hemisphere stroke. This research tests for emotion recognition impairments after right-hemisphere stroke and examines whether such deficits are associated with worse reported social support. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Twenty right-hemisphere stroke patients (9 female, 11 male) and 23 age-matched healthy control subjects (9 female, 14 male) completed laboratory testing including the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test Short. Subjects additionally completed a measure of self-reported social support using the Older Americans Resources and Services questionnaire. Emotion recognition accuracy was calculated using overall accuracy and valence accuracy (i.e. correctly rating a positive emotion as positive). RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Right-hemisphere stroke patients had lower overall emotion recognition accuracy than controls (patients; M = 37.8%, SD = 18.9%. controls; M = 48.5%, SD = 14.6%, t(41)=2.11, p=.041). Furthermore, patients had significantly lower valence accuracy (patients; M = 84.5%, SD = 10.7%. controls; M = 90.0%, SD = 5.2%, t(41)=2.19, p =.035), indicating that they more often mistook a positive emotion as a negative emotion, and vice-versa. Finally, within the right-hemisphere patient group, overall emotion recognition accuracy was trending to be positively correlated with self-reported social support (rho = 0.397, p =.083), suggesting that poor emotion recognition skills may be associated with worse social outcomes in the real-world. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Our findings indicate that right-hemisphere stroke is associated with impaired emotion recognition. Future research could investigate whether an emotion recognition training may be beneficial for right-hemisphere stroke patient recovery.