Amygdala lesion in temporal lobe epilepsy subjects impairs associative learning of emotional facial expressions

To investigate the role of unilateral amygdala lesions on processing emotio ns, 22 drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) subjects (12 with left-s ided and ten with right-sided focus) were tested, after anterior temporal l obectomy or selective amygdalo-hippocampectomy on two associative learning tasks containing emotional and neutral facial expressions, respectively. Vo lumetric lesion analysis was performed on the basis of 3-D MR images. No ef fects of lesion side were found in TLE subjects. Taken thr extent of amygda la damage into account, an interaction effect could be shown between task ( learning of neutral facial expressions versus emotional facial expressions) acid group (subjects with little versus considerable amygdala damage), ind icating worse performance of subjects with considerable amygdala damage in learning emotional facial expressions. Subjects with considerable amygdala damage were also significantly impaired in learning emotional facial expres sions when compared with control subjects. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. A ll rights reserved.