Emotional Stimulus Processing in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy before and after Surgery

10/02/2026 to 10/02/2030

Emotional processing (EP) is crucial for social interactions and mental health. The involved brain networks include regions affected in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Accordingly, impairments in EP have been reported in patients with TLE (1-4) and TLE has been used as a disease model in affective neuroscience (5). Behavioural studies demonstrate that patients with TLE are less accurate than healthy controls (HC) in facial emotion recognition (6). The underlying neural correlates of EP impairments in TLE, however, are not well understood. Previous data, including our own work, leave open to what extent results could be influenced by reorganization, including structural changes in fiber tracts, whether they generalize to the processing of positive stimuli, and if they hold across modalities, also occurring for auditory stimuli. Furthermore, no previous study has evaluated comprehensively how temporal lobe lesions or surgeries affect peripheral physiology responses to emotional stimuli. A better understanding of specific behavioural and physiologic characteristics of EP and their reorganization after epilepsy surgery might improve management and treatment recommendations of TLE patients, resulting in better overall quality of life. At the same time, systematic study of EP in TLE patients helps us to address fundamental questions regarding the neural implementation and physiology of EP. The joint effort of two centres with relevant expertise and access to a large patient pool provides a unique opportunity to considerably advance our knowledge in these respects.