Work

Exploring emotion identification and categorisation in simulated central vision loss: an event-related potential study

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Objective This study investigated how simulated central vision loss (SimCVL) affected emotion identification and categorisation in individuals with normal vision.Methods and analysis The study recruited 29 healthy volunteers, including young adults (YA: 20–35 years) (n=10), mid-aged (MA: 40–55 years) (n=10) and older adults (60–75 years) (n=9). The participants were presented with human faces displaying three emotions, neutral, happy and sad, as stimuli. SimCVL was simulated using custom-made MATLAB programming. The study developed two experiments to investigate emotion identification (experiment 1: oddball design) and categorisation (experiment 2: equiprobable design). The behavioural responses and event-related potential (ERP) waveforms were analysed using E-prime and electroencephalogram laboratory toolbox in MATLAB, and the data was analysed using SPSS V.20.Results Emotion identification was present for both happy and sad in the Oddball (P300) paradigm. However, reduced amplitudes and delayed latencies were observed in OAs, particularly in simulated conditions (p<0.01). OAs had delayed reaction times and reduced accuracy in the simulated condition compared with MA and YA (p<0.01). No or minimal differences in amplitudes and latencies were found for early visual processing (P100) and encoding of facial features (N170) across age groups in simulated conditions. Delayed latencies and reduced amplitudes were observed in OAs when decoding (N250) facial features.Conclusion Emotion identification and categorisation are affected in older individuals with SimCVL compared with young and MA adults. Negative emotions had reduced performance index than happy across age groups, and this effect was maximum in OAs. The study suggests that further research is needed to explore the neural basis of emotional processing in patients with CVL using event-related potentials.

Source: BMJ Open Ophthalmology

DOI: 10.1136/bmjophth-2025-002689

Authors: Gopinath Madheswaran, Ramesh S Ve, Shonraj Ballae Ganeshrao, Rajiv Raman, Hari Prakash Palaniswamy

Institutions: Gulf Medical University, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Sankara Nethralaya

Language: English

Topic: Face Recognition and Perception

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,085