Recognition of facial expressions of emotion in panic disorder.

Background: Whether patients with panic disorder behave differently or not when recognizing the facial expressions of emotion remains unsettled.

Methods: We tested 21 outpatients with panic disorder and 34 healthy subjects, with a photo set from the Matsumoto and Ekman Japanese and Caucasian facial expressions of emotion, which includes anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

Results: Compared to the healthy subjects, patients showed lower accuracies when recognizing disgust and fear, but a higher accuracy when recognizing surprise.

Conclusions: These results suggest that the altered specificity to these emotions leads tso self-awareness mechanisms to prevent further emotional reactions in panic disorder patients.