The Role of Sensorimotor Simulation in Emotion Recognition: Insights from a Meta-Analysis on individuals with Moebius Syndrome

According to the sensorimotor simulation theory, in order to recognize other people’s emotions we imperceptibly replicate the motor and somatosensory neural processes involved in producing facial expressions. Therefore, the inability to control facial muscles and produce facial expressions should alter the experience of emotional understanding, possibly compromising emotion recognition itself. This might be the case of Meobius Syndrome (MBS), a congenital condition involving permanent facial paralysis caused by reduced or failed formation of 6 and 7 cranial nerve. Subjects with MBS exhibit the absence of facial muscle movement, thus they are unable to produce facial expressions. Quite a few experimental studies already investigated this possible impairment. The results are diverse and difficult to replicate, making it complex to determine whether subjects with MBS are actually worse than control subjects in emotional recognition. The aim of this study is to perform a meta-analysis and produce measures of effect of the works found in literature about this phenomenon. Three databases were researched, looking for studies with at least one emotion recognition task submitted to subjects with MBS. Seven papers were collected for the final meta-analysis and the effect size was calculated.