Blepharospasm patients selectively worse at reading emotions from eyes, not body language.
Blepharospasm as a research model for understanding the perception of facial expressions.
Dor Bloch … Iftah Biran
Acta psychologica · 2026
Background
Recognizing human emotions is a pivotal evolutionary advantage in interpersonal interactions and relies extensively on interpreting facial expressions.
Methods
Twenty individuals with blepharospasm (PTS) and 20 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls (controls) completed two emotion recognition tasks: an eye-based task (Baron-Cohen task; BC) and a body-based task (BEAST).
n = 20 patients and 20 controls
Results
patients needed 30% more body cues to match same-face reading speed as eyes
1.3ratio
Patients (PTS)
1.01ratio
Controls (CON)
“
Conclusion · 1 of 2
This study demonstrates a selective impairment in emotion recognition through the eyes in individuals with blepharospasm, linking motor dysfunction in a specific facial region to deficits in perceiving emotional cues conveyed by that same region in others.
Conclusion · 2 of 2
These findings underscore the role of facial motor circuits in emotion perception and offer new insights into the embodied neural mechanisms underlying affect recognition.