Dysfunction in Automatic Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome: An Event-Related Potential Study

• Main Authors: Lv R, Nie S, Liu Z, Guo Y, Zhang Y, Xu S, Hou X, Chen J, Ma Y, Fan Z, Liu X
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dove Medical Press 2020-09-01
• Series: Nature and Science of Sleep
• Subjects: osas; emmn; facial expressions; pre-attentive processing; negative bias effect
• Online Access: https://www.dovepress.com/dysfunction-in-automatic-processing-of-emotional-facial-expressions-in-peer-reviewed-article-NSS

Renjun Lv,1– 5 Shanjing Nie,1– 4 Zhenhua Liu,6 Yunliang Guo,1– 4 Yue Zhang,7 Song Xu,1– 4 Xunyao Hou,1– 4 Jian Chen,1– 4 Yingjuan Ma,8 Zhongyu Fan,1– 5 Xueping Liu1– 4 1Department of Geriatrics, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 3Anti-Aging Monitoring Laboratory, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Anti-Aging, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 5Shandong Provincial Hospital, Shandong First Medical University & Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 6Center of Sleep Medicine, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 7Department of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 8Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, Shandong, 250021, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Xueping Liu Tel [phone]Email [e-mail]: Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a prevalent chronic disease characterized by sleep fragmentation and intermittent hypoxemia. Several studies suggested that electrophysiological changes and neurocognitive abnormalities occurred in OSAS patients. In this study, we compared automatic processing of emotional facial expressions schematic in OSAS patients and matched healthy controls via assessing expression-related mismatch negativity (EMMN).Methods: Twenty-two OSAS patients (mean age 44.59 years) and twenty-one healthy controls (mean age 42.71 years) were enrolled in this study. All participants underwent Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale test and polysomnographic recording. An expression-related oddball paradigm was used to elicit EMMN and the electroencephalogram was recorded and analyzed. Furthermore, Pearson’s correlations were calculated to discuss the correlation between neuropsychological test scores, clinical variables and electrophysiological data.Results: Compared with healthy controls, OSAS sufferers demonstrated significantly reduced EMMN mean amplitudes within corresponding time intervals, regardless of happy or sad conditions. Meanwhile, we observed that amplitude of sad EMMN was larger (more negative) than happy EMNN in healthy controls, while not in patients. Moderate correlations were found between MoCA test scores, sleep parameters and EMMN amplitudes.Conclusion: Our findings suggested pre-attentive dysfunction of processing emotional facial expressions in patients with OSAS, without the existence of negative bias effect. Moreover, correlation analysis showed that clinical characteristics of OSAS patients could affect EMMN amplitudes. Further studies on the advantages of EMMN as clinical and electrophysiological indicators of OSAS are warranted.Keywords: OSAS, EMMN, facial expressions, pre-attentive processing, negative bias effect