Recovery from Emotion Recognition Impairment after Temporal Lobectomy

Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) can be associated with emotion recognition impairment
that can be particularly severe in patients with early onset seizures (1–3). Whereas,
there is growing evidence that memory and language can improve in seizure-free patients
after anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) (4), the effects of surgery on emotional processing
are still unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate
short-term reorganization of networks engaged in facial emotion recognition in MTLE
patients. Behavioral and fMRI data were collected from six patients before and after ATL.
During the fMRI scan, patientswere asked to make a gender decision on fearful and neutral
faces. Behavioral data demonstrated that two patients with early onset right MTLE were
impaired in fear recognition while fMRI results showed they lacked specific activations for
fearful faces. Post-ATL behavioral data showed improved emotion recognition ability, while
fMRI demonstrated the recruitment of a functional network for fearful face processing.
Our results suggest that ATL elicited brain plasticity mechanisms allowing behavioral and
fMRI improvement in emotion recognition.