Skin conductance response and emotional response in women with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures.

Purpose: Recent etiopathogenic models place emotional dysregulation at the core of psychogenic nonepileptic seizure (PNES). Our purpose was to assess physiological, cognitive, and behavioral emotional responses of PNES patients.

Methods: This study compared three types of emotional responses to visual emotional stimuli between 34 female PNES group and 34 matched healthy controls: physiological response measured by skin conductance response (SCR) (rate, amplitude and latency) and heart rate deceleration; cognitive response measured by valence and arousal elicited by the images; and behavioural response measured by latency of ratings.