The brains of patients with psoriasis are less responsive to expressions of disgust on other people’s faces, a neurological device that may help them cope with the social stigma of the disease, a recent study found.
Psoriasis patients had significantly smaller signal responses to disgusted faces in the bilateral insular cortex compared with healthy controls, according to an online report in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. The insular cortex is the region of the brain associated with feelings and observation of disgust.
“We hypothesize that patients with psoriasis, in this case male patients, develop a coping mechanism to protect them from stressful emotional responses by blocking the processing of disgusted facial expressions,” Professor Christopher E.M. Griffiths, Dermatological Sciences, The University of Manchester and colleagues wrote.
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