Emotion recognition dysfunction after anesthesia and cardiac surgery

Delin Zhang; Yi Shen; Zhiyun Chen; Yang Guo; Zaifeng Gao; Jian Huang; Xiqian Lu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1001493

Emotion recognition dysfunction after anesthesia and cardiac surgery

Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 16:13:1001493. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1001493. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Delin Zhang¹, Yi Shen², Zhiyun Chen², Yang Guo², Zaifeng Gao², Jian Huang^{3

4

5}, Xiqian Lu⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesiology, First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
³ Department of Data and Information, The Children's Hospital Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ Sino-Finland Joint AI Laboratory for Child Health of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ National Clinical Research Center for Child Health, Hangzhou, China.
⁶ Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Cognitive dysfunction after anesthesia and surgery has long been recognized. Recently, researchers provided empirical evidence for social cognition dysfunction (SCD) after anesthesia and surgery. In the present study, we concentrated on the deficits in emotion recognition, one of the most important clinical perspectives in SCD, in patients who underwent cardiac surgery. Biological motion (BM) was considered as the stimulus of interest, and patients' abilities of BM emotion perception and action perception before and after anesthesia and surgery were examined. In total, 60 adult patients (40-72 years old) completed the BM recognition task, which required them to label the types of actions and emotions of perceived BM. The results showed that while action perception remained intact after cardiac surgery, 18.3% of patients exhibited deficits in emotion perception, further confirming the existence of SCD after anesthesia and surgery.

Keywords: anesthesia and surgery; biological motion; cardiac surgery; cognitive changes; emotion recognition; social cognition.