http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Emotions are often implicit undertones to our communication interactions, and decoding them requires substantial social and cognitive abilities. Prior research has shown that chronic alcoholics often demonstrate impaired socio-cognitive and communicative abilities as well as emotion-related behaviors. Male alcoholics in particular suffer from dysfunctions in empathy. A study of the ability of chronic male alcoholics to recognize the emotional component of irony in relation to their empathic abilities has found a clear deficit. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-alcoholic-men-deficit-empathy-distorted.html Addiction Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:00:07 EST news271604481