Brain Plasticity and Emotion Recognition in Patients With Facial Palsy Before & After Surgical Rehabilitation: MEG Study (FACE_REHAB_MEG)

January 23, 2026 updated by: Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France

Etude de la plasticité cérébrale et de la Reconnaissance Des émotions en magnétoencéphalographie Chez Les Patients paralysés Faciaux Avant et après réhabilitation Motrice de la Face

Facial palsy (of one hemiface) affects the sensorimotor representation of the face of the patients, and possibly also their mental representation of emotional facial expressions. Three surgical techniques are performed to rehabilitate the face motricity in patients with severe facial palsy: Facio-facial anastomosis (AFF), Hypoglosso-facial anastomosis (AHF), and Lengthening temporalis myoplasty (LTM). Our objective is to study brain plasticity and facial emotion recognition in patients with facial palsy before and after surgical rehabilitation, using non invasive magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording during motor and emotion recognition tasks.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Facial palsy (of one hemiface) affects the sensorimotor representation of the face of the patients, and possibly also their mental representation of emotional facial expressions. Patients with severe facial palsy can benefit from surgical rehabilitation, allowing them to recover the motor and expressive function of the face. Three surgical techniques are performed to rehabilitate facial palsy: Facio-facial anastomosis (AFF), Hypoglosso-facial anastomosis (AHF), and Lengthening temporalis myoplasty (LTM). Prinicipal objective is to study brain plasticity and facial emotion recognition in patients with facial palsy before and after surgical rehabilitation. For this, the investigators will use magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is a non-invasive brain imaging method with high temporal and good spatial resolution.

  1. First objective is to characterize the brain plasticity at a global level, independently of the surgical technique used. The investigators will use simple motor tasks consisting in performing different facial movements and a control index flexion task to examine the cortical plasticity associated with the restauration of the motor and expressive function of the face in patients with facial palsy.
  2. Second objective is to examine if the brain magnetic responses associated with the recognition of emotional faces are modified in the paralyzed patients. The investigators will study the brain responses to angry, sad, happy, and neutral faces in a simple emotion recognition task.

Twenty patients with facial palsy will be included in the study. They will undergo two visits, during which MEG will be recorded in two types of tasks: motor task and emotion recognition task (see below). One visit will take place before surgery. The second visit will take place after the surgical intervention and the face motor rehabilitation, 3 to 18 months after the 1st visit.

MOTOR TASK: The motor task will comprise 5 types of simple movements: eye blinks, smiling, tongue protraction, teeth greeting, index flexion. These movements will be performed repetitively - at a pace of about 1 movement every 2 second - in separate, randomly alternating, blocks of 24 movements of each type, for a total of 120 movements of each type.

EMOTION RECOGNITION TASK: A total of 320 faces will be presented to the patients. The faces will be distributed in 5 blocks of 16 different faces (8 male, 8 female), displaying each of 4 emotional expressions: happiness, anger, sadness, and neutral expression. Occasional suprised target faces will be added. The patient's task will be to report the occurrence of those faces by pressing a button in his/her dominant hand. The stimuli will be presented in random order in each block.

The investogators will analyze neuromagnetic activities at the sensor and source levels during the motor tasks (primary objective) and in response to the faces (secondary objective).

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

16

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • France
      • Paris, France, 75651
        • Frederic TANKERE

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • No history of psychiatric illness
  • Severe facial palsy (V or VI grade on House and Brackman scale)
  • No evolutive neurologic pathology beside the lesion of the VIIth nerve
  • Signature of informed consent
  • Being a member of, or beneficiary of, a social security scheme

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Evolutive neurological disease outside the lesion of the VIIth nerve
  • General pathology leading to neuropathy
  • Person unable to express his/her consent
  • Adult under a legal protection measure
  • Adult deprived of liberty by judicial or administrative decision.
  • Adult participating in another research protocol involving the human person or subjected to a period of exclusion from another research
  • Claustrophobia
  • Implants or metallic objects (including eyeglasses) that are susceptible to pertrubate the MEG signal
  • Treatment with known action on the central nervous system (Excessive recreational use of psychotropic drugs, ongoing benzodiazepine therapy)
  • For the patients who will undergo a complementary structural MRI for MEG source localisation, additional exclusion criteria are the contraindications to MRI (including: pacemaker or neurosensitive stimulator or implanted defibrillator, anevrism or vascular malformation of the brain, cochlear implants, ferromagnetic objects or prosthesis in the eyes or brain, mechanical heart valve prosthesis, permanent eye makeup; pregnant or nursing women)

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Other: Behavioral tasks with MEG recording
  1. MOTOR TASK: Five types of simple movements will be performed: eye blinks, smiling, tongue protraction, teeth greeting, index flexion. A total of 120 movements of each type will be performed in a set of five blocks interspersed with short breaks.
  2. EMOTION RECOGNITION TASK: Four emotional expressions will be presented: happiness, anger, sadness, and neutral expression. A total of 320 face stimuli will be presented in 5 blocks interspersed with short breaks. Occasional target faces displaying a suprised expression will be added. The patient's task will be to report the occurrence of those faces by pressing a button in his/her dominant hand.
Device: Behavioral tasks with MEG recording
The patients will undergo two visits, during which MEG will be recorded in two types of behavioral tasks: motor task and emotion recognition task. One visit will take place before surgery. The second visit will take place after the surgical intervention and the face motor rehabilitation, 3 to 18 months after the 1st visit.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) activities during facial motor tasks
Time Frame: between 3 and 18 months
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) activities during the motor tasks
between 3 and 18 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) activities in reponse to emotional faces
Time Frame: between 3 and 18 months
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) activities in reponse to sad, angry, happy, and neutral faces during the facial emotion recognition task
between 3 and 18 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France

Collaborators

Fondation des Gueules Cassées

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Frédéric TANKERE, MD, PhD, Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 26, 2017

Primary Completion (Actual)

February 27, 2023

Study Completion (Actual)

February 27, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

May 3, 2017

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 29, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

February 5, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

January 26, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 23, 2026

Last Verified

January 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • C16-70
  • 2016-A01861-50 (Registry Identifier: IDRCB)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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