Recognition Accuracy and Response Bias to Happy and Sad Facial Expressions in Patients With Major Depression

Cortical functional mechanisms in emotional cognitive tasks in first-episode, drug-naïve with major depressive disorder: A fNIRS study

BACKGROUND

Previous research has revealed that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have negative biases in various aspects of information processing, and these biases are mainly manifested in recognizing facial expressions. However, the link between this emotional cognitive inhibition and neural activation mechanisms in cortical brain regions remains poorly understood. Therefore, this study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the potential impaired regions and neural mechanisms associated with facial emotion cognition in MDD patients.

METHODS

37 MDD patients and 34 healthy controls (HC) were recruited to participate in three sets of cognitive tasks for emotion recognition, and the cortical activation in the brain was synchronously recorded using multi-channel fNIRS.

RESULTS

During tasks requiring the motions identification of sad versus happy emotional states, MDD patients exhibit altered activation in both the left frontopolar cortex (FPC) and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Notably, the FPC demonstrates a higher level of internal coherence and broader correlation with other cortical areas. Moreover, MDD patients showed lower accuracy in distinguishing emotional cues associated with sadness versus those associated with neutral and happy emotions.

LIMITATIONS

The study had a relatively small sample size, and it specifically examined only three prevalent facial expressions.

CONCLUSION

Facial expression recognition in MDD patients is characterized by negative cognitive interpretation of expressions, which are associated with various cortical altered activations. Neuroimaging further suggests that the cognitive inhibition of emotion signal recognition in everyday interpersonal interactions in MDD patients may primarily be influenced by activation in the left FPC.

Exploring specific associations of childhood maltreatment with social cognition in drug-naive first-episode major depressive disorder: a sex-centric approach

Childhood maltreatment (CM) has been linked to social cognition deficits in major depressive disorder (MDD), but little is known about sex-specific effects. This study aimed to investigate the sex-specific associations of CM with social cognition in first-episode drug-naive patients with MDD. A total of 117 first-episode drug-naive patients with MDD and 134 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited and assessed for demographic and clinical characteristics. All participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C (IRI), and Facial Emotion Recognition Test. Partial correlation analysis was used to explore the sex-specific association of CM with social cognition. Our findings revealed significant differences in the associations of CM with social cognition between males and females in MDD patients. In comparison to HCs, the associations of CM with social cognition displayed distinct and even contrasting sex-specific patterns in MDD patients. Specifically, male MDD patients exhibited unique imbalanced associations between emotional neglect and alexithymia, while both female and male MDD patients shared imbalanced associations of childhood abuse with empathy. These results emphasize the importance of considering the sex-specific associations of CM with social cognition in MDD and highlight the need for personalized interventions and treatments based on sex for MDD patients with a history of CM.

Reading language of the eyes in female depression

Aberrations in non-verbal social cognition have been reported to coincide with major depressive disorder. Yet little is known about the role of the eyes. To fill this gap, the present study explores whether and, if so, how reading language of the eyes is altered in depression. For this purpose, patients and person-by-person matched typically developing individuals were administered the Emotions in Masked Faces task and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, modified, both of which contained a comparable amount of visual information available. For achieving group homogeneity, we set a focus on females as major depressive disorder displays a gender-specific profile. The findings show that facial masks selectively affect inferring emotions: recognition of sadness and anger are more heavily compromised in major depressive disorder as compared with typically developing controls, whereas the recognition of fear, happiness, and neutral expressions remains unhindered. Disgust, the forgotten emotion of psychiatry, is the least recognizable emotion in both groups. On the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test patients exhibit lower accuracy on positive expressions than their typically developing peers, but do not differ on negative items. In both depressive and typically developing individuals, the ability to recognize emotions behind a mask and performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test are linked to each other in processing speed, but not recognition accuracy. The outcome provides a blueprint for understanding the complexities of reading language of the eyes within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Insula uses overlapping codes for emotion in self and others

In daily life, we must recognize others' emotions so we can respond appropriately. This ability may rely, at least in part, on neural responses similar to those associated with our own emotions. We hypothesized that the insula, a cortical region near the junction of the temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes, may play a key role in this process. We recorded local field potential (LFP) activity in human neurosurgical patients performing two tasks, one focused on identifying their own emotional response and one on identifying facial emotional responses in others. We found matching patterns of gamma- and high-gamma band activity for the two tasks in the insula. Three other regions (MTL, ACC, and OFC) clearly encoded both self- and other-emotions, but used orthogonal activity patterns to do so. These results support the hypothesis that the insula plays a particularly important role in mediating between experienced vs. observed emotions.

Neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact with parents in depressed and nondepressed adolescents

Eye contact improves mood, facilitates connectedness, and is assumed to strengthen the parent-child bond. Adolescent depression is linked to difficulties in social interactions, the parent-child bond included. Our goal was to elucidate adolescents' affective and neural responses to prolonged eye contact with one's parent in nondepressed adolescents (HC) and how these responses are affected in depressed adolescents. While in the scanner, 59 nondepressed and 19 depressed adolescents were asked to make eye contact with their parent, an unfamiliar peer, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves by using videos of prolonged direct and averted gaze, as an approximation of eye contact. After each trial, adolescents reported on their mood and feelings of connectedness, and eye movements and BOLD-responses were assessed. In HCs, eye contact boosted mood and feelings of connectedness and increased activity in inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), temporal pole, and superior frontal gyrus. Unlike HCs, eye contact did not boost the mood of depressed adolescents. While HCs reported increased mood and feelings of connectedness to the sight of their parent versus others, depressed adolescents did not. Depressed adolescents exhibited blunted overall IFG activity. These findings show that adolescents are particularly sensitive to eye contact and respond strongly to the sight of their parents. This sensitivity seems to be blunted in depressed adolescents. For clinical purposes, it is important to gain a better understanding of how the responsivity to eye contact in general and with their parents in particular, can be restored in adolescents with depression.

A Deep Learning Driven Simulation Analysis of the Emotional Profiles of Depression Based on Facial Expression Dynamics

Objective

: Diagnosis and assessment of depression rely on scoring systems based on questionnaires, either self-reported by patients or administered by clinicians, and observation of patient facial expressions during the interviews plays a crucial role in making impressions in clinical settings. Deep learning driven approaches can assist clinicians in the course of diagnosis of depression by recognizing subtle facial expressions and emotions in depression patients.

Methods

: Seventeen simulated patients who acted as depressed patients participated in this study. A trained psychiatrist structurally interviewed each participant with moderate depression in accordance with a prepared scenario and without depressive features. Interviews were video-recorded, and a facial emotion recognition algorithm was used to classify emotions of each frame.

Results

: Among seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness, and surprise), sadness was expressed in a higher proportion on average in the depression-simulated group compared to the normal group. Neutral and fear were expressed in higher proportions on average in the normal group compared to the normal group. The overall distribution of emotions between the two groups was significantly different (p ＜ 0.001). Variance in emotion was significantly less in the depression-simulated group (p ＜ 0.05).

Conclusion

: This study suggests a novel and practical approach to understand the emotional expression of depression patients based on deep learning techniques. Further research would allow us to obtain more perspectives on the emotional profiles of clinical patients, potentially providing helpful insights in making diagnosis of depression patients.

Behavioral and neuroanatomical correlates of facial emotion processing in post-stroke depression

BACKGROUND

Emotion processing deficits are known to accompany depressive symptoms and are often seen in stroke patients. Little is known about the influence of post-stroke depressive (PSD) symptoms and specific brain lesions on altered emotion processing abilities and how these phenomena develop over time. This potential relationship may impact post-stroke rehabilitation of neurological and psychosocial function. To address this scientific gap, we investigated the relationship between PSD symptoms and emotion processing abilities in a longitudinal study design from the first days post-stroke into the early chronic phase.

METHODS

Twenty-six ischemic stroke patients performed an emotion processing task on videos with emotional faces ('happy,' 'sad,' 'anger,' 'fear,' and 'neutral') at different intensity levels (20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%). Recognition accuracies and response times were measured, as well as scores of depressive symptoms (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale). Twenty-eight healthy participants matched in age and sex were included as a control group. Whole-brain support-vector regression lesion-symptom mapping (SVR-LSM) analyses were performed to investigate whether specific lesion locations were associated with the recognition accuracy of specific emotion categories.

RESULTS

Stroke patients performed worse in overall recognition accuracy compared to controls, specifically in the recognition of happy, sad, and fearful faces. Notably, more depressed stroke patients showed an increased processing towards specific negative emotions, as they responded significantly faster to angry faces and recognized sad faces of low intensities significantly more accurately. These effects obtained for the first days after stroke partly persisted to follow-up assessment several months later. SVR-LSM analyses revealed that inferior and middle frontal regions (IFG/MFG) and insula and putamen were associated with emotion-recognition deficits in stroke. Specifically, recognizing happy facial expressions was influenced by lesions affecting the anterior insula, putamen, IFG, MFG, orbitofrontal cortex, and rolandic operculum. Lesions in the posterior insula, rolandic operculum, and MFG were also related to reduced recognition accuracy of fearful facial expressions, whereas recognition deficits of sad faces were associated with frontal pole, IFG, and MFG damage.

CONCLUSION

PSD symptoms facilitate processing negative emotional stimuli, specifically angry and sad facial expressions. The recognition accuracy of different emotional categories was linked to brain lesions in emotion-related processing circuits, including insula, basal ganglia, IFG, and MFG. In summary, our study provides support for psychosocial and neural factors underlying emotional processing after stroke, contributing to the pathophysiology of PSD.

Locus Coeruleus and Noradrenergic Pharmacology in Neurodegenerative Disease

Adrenoceptors (ARs) throughout the brain are stimulated by noradrenaline originating mostly from neurons of the locus coeruleus, a brainstem nucleus that is ostensibly the earliest to show detectable pathology in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The α1-AR, α2-AR, and β-AR subtypes expressed in target brain regions and on a range of cell populations define the physiological responses to noradrenaline, which includes activation of cognitive function in addition to modulation of neurometabolism, cerebral blood flow, and neuroinflammation. As these heterocellular functions are critical for maintaining brain homeostasis and neuronal health, combating the loss of noradrenergic tone from locus coeruleus degeneration may therefore be an effective treatment for both cognitive symptoms and disease modification in neurodegenerative indications. Two pharmacologic approaches are receiving attention in recent clinical studies: preserving noradrenaline levels (e.g., via reuptake inhibition) and direct activation of target adrenoceptors. Here, we review the expression and role of adrenoceptors in the brain, the preclinical studies which demonstrate that adrenergic stimulation can support cognitive function and cerebral health by reversing the effects of noradrenaline depletion, and the human data provided by pharmacoepidemiologic analyses and clinical trials which together identify adrenoceptors as promising targets for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease.

Emotional Bias among Individuals at Risk for Seasonal Affective Disorder-An EEG Study during Remission in Summer

Emotional bias in attention and memory is well researched in depression. Patients with depression prioritize processing of negative information over positive input. While there is evidence that emotional bias exists in seasonal affective disorder (SAD) during winter, it is unclear whether such altered cognition exists also during summer. Moreover, it is unclear whether such bias affects attention, memory, or both. In this study, we investigated 110 individuals in summer, 34 of whom reported suffering from low mood during winter, according to the seasonal pattern assessment questionnaire. While the electroencephalogram was recorded, participants learned 60 emotional pictures and subsequently were asked to recognize them in an old/new task. There were no clear group differences in behavioral measures, and no brain response differences in frontal alpha power during learning. During recognition, at 100-300 ms post stimulus individuals with higher seasonality scores exhibited larger alpha power in response to negative as compared to neutral stimuli, while individuals with low seasonality scores exhibited larger alpha power in response to positive as compared to neutral stimuli. While we cannot draw conclusions whether this is an effect of attention or memory, the finding suggests that early cognitive processes are altered already during summer in individuals with increased likelihood to experience SAD during winter. Our data provide evidence for an all-year-round cognitive vulnerability in this population.

"The wrong tools for the right job": a critical meta-analysis of traditional tests to assess behavioural impacts of maternal separation

RATIONALE

Unconditioned tasks in rodents have been the mainstay of behavioural assessment for decades, but their validity and sensitivity to detect the behavioural consequences of early life stress (ELS) remains contentious and highly variable.

OBJECTIVES

In the present study, we carried out a meta-analysis to investigate whether persistent behavioural effects, as assessed using unconditioned procedures in rats, are a reliable consequence of early repeated maternal separation, a commonly used procedure in rodents to study ELS.

METHODS

A literature search identified 100 studies involving maternally separated rats and the following unconditioned procedures: the elevated plus maze (EPM); open field test (OFT); sucrose preference test (SPT) and forced swim task (FST). Studies were included for analysis if the separation of offspring from the dam was at least 60 min every day during the pre-weaning period prior to the start of adolescence.

RESULTS

Our findings show that unconditioned tasks are generally poor at consistently demonstrating differences between control and separated groups with pooled effect sizes that were either small or non-existent (EPM: Hedge's g =  - 0.35, p = 0.01, OFT: Hedge's g =  - 0.32, p = 0.05, SPT: Hedge's g =  - 0.33, p = 0.21, FST: Hedge's g = 0.99, p = 0.0001). Despite considerable procedural variability between studies, heterogeneity statistics were low; indicating the lack of standardization in the maternal separation protocol was the not the cause of these inconsistent effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate that in general, unconditioned tests of depression and anxiety are not sufficient to reveal the full behavioural repertoire of maternal separation stress should not be relied upon in isolation. We argue that more objective tasks that sensitively detect specific cognitive processes are better suited for translational research on stress-related disorders such as depression.

Human emotion processing accuracy, negative biases, and fMRI activation are associated with childhood trauma

Introduction

Emerging literature suggests that childhood trauma may influence facial emotion perception (FEP), with the potential to negatively bias both emotion perception and reactions to emotion-related inputs. Negative emotion perception biases are associated with a range of psychiatric and behavioral problems, potentially due or as a result of difficult social interactions. Unfortunately, there is a poor understanding of whether observed negative biases are related to childhood trauma history, depression history, or processes common to (and potentially causative of) both experiences.

Methods

The present cross-sectional study examines the relation between FEP and neural activation during FEP with retrospectively reported childhood trauma in young adult participants with remitted major depressive disorder (rMDD, n = 41) and without psychiatric histories (healthy controls [HC], n = 34). Accuracy of emotion categorization and negative bias errors during FEP and brain activation were each measured during exposure to fearful, angry, happy, sad, and neutral faces. We examined participant behavioral and neural responses in relation to total reported severity of childhood abuse and neglect (assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, CTQ).

Results

Results corrected for multiple comparisons indicate that higher trauma scores were associated with greater likelihood of miscategorizing happy faces as angry. Activation in the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) positively correlated with trauma scores when participants viewed faces that they correctly categorized as angry, fearful, sad, and happy.

Discussion

Identifying the neural mechanisms by which childhood trauma and MDD may change facial emotion perception could inform targeted prevention efforts for MDD or related interpersonal difficulties.

Intracranial stimulation and EEG feature analysis reveal affective salience network specialization

Emotion is represented in limbic and prefrontal brain areas, herein termed the affective salience network (ASN). Within the ASN, there are substantial unknowns about how valence and emotional intensity are processed-specifically, which nodes are associated with affective bias (a phenomenon in which participants interpret emotions in a manner consistent with their own mood). A recently developed feature detection approach ('specparam') was used to select dominant spectral features from human intracranial electrophysiological data, revealing affective specialization within specific nodes of the ASN. Spectral analysis of dominant features at the channel level suggests that dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC), anterior insula and ventral-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are sensitive to valence and intensity, while the amygdala is primarily sensitive to intensity. Akaike information criterion model comparisons corroborated the spectral analysis findings, suggesting all four nodes are more sensitive to intensity compared to valence. The data also revealed that activity in dACC and vmPFC were predictive of the extent of affective bias in the ratings of facial expressions-a proxy measure of instantaneous mood. To examine causality of the dACC in affective experience, 130 Hz continuous stimulation was applied to dACC while patients viewed and rated emotional faces. Faces were rated significantly happier during stimulation, even after accounting for differences in baseline ratings. Together the data suggest a causal role for dACC during the processing of external affective stimuli.

Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions

In contrast to prototypical facial expressions, we show less perceptual tolerance in perceiving vague expressions by demonstrating an interpretation bias, such as more frequent perception of anger or happiness when categorizing ambiguous expressions of angry and happy faces that are morphed in different proportions and displayed under high- or low-quality conditions. However, it remains unclear whether this interpretation bias is specific to emotion categories or reflects a general negativity versus positivity bias and whether the degree of this bias is affected by the valence or category of two morphed expressions. These questions were examined in two eye-tracking experiments by systematically manipulating expression ambiguity and image quality in fear- and sad-happiness faces (Experiment 1) and by directly comparing anger-, fear-, sadness-, and disgust-happiness expressions (Experiment 2). We found that increasing expression ambiguity and degrading image quality induced a general negativity versus positivity bias in expression categorization. The degree of negativity bias, the associated reaction time and face-viewing gaze allocation were further manipulated by different expression combinations. It seems that although we show a viewing condition-dependent bias in interpreting vague facial expressions that display valence-contradicting expressive cues, it appears that the perception of these ambiguous expressions is guided by a categorical process similar to that involved in perceiving prototypical expressions.

Altered social cognition in early relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis

INTRODUCTION

People with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) may suffer from some degree of impaired social cognition (SC), the process that integrates the mental operations underlying social interactions. SC is still not clearly characterized in the early stages of MS, and it is not defined whether SC is independent of cognitive impairment.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to compare SC measures in a population of early (≤5 years) relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) with an age, sex, and education-matched control group. All participants performed a clinical and a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. SC evaluation included assessment of facial emotion recognitionn by the Emotion Recognition Task, affective theory of mind (ToM) by the Reading the Mind in the eyes Test (RMET) and cognitive ToM by the Faux Pas test (FPT). Depression, anxiety, fatigue, and quality of life were also assessed. We included 38 pwMS (mean age 34.8 ± 8.7, 78.9% female sex, mean disease duration 1.9±1.3 years) and 38 healthy controls (mean age 34.9 ± 8.4, 81.6% female sex).

RESULTS

Altered social cognition was present in 34.2% of pwMS. Participants with MS performed worse than controls on measures of cognitive ToM, and affective ToM. There were no differences regarding FER. Cognitive ToM and FER correlated with cognitive functions, but no correlation was found between affective ToM and cognitive tests. The only clinical factor associated with altered SC was poor quality of life.

CONCLUSIONS

Social cognition impairment is already present in a significant percentage of early RRMS patients, namely ToM deficits. While cognitive ToM and FER appears to correlate with impaired cognitive results, affective ToM is likely independent of other cognitive functions.

Comparative study of magnetic resonance imaging-based neuroimaging methods in older adults with depression

BACKGROUND

Older patients with depression often have accompanying physical diseases, thus, their disease situation is more complex than that of younger people. The medical community has aimed for earlier diagnosis of senile depression due to ineffective treatment and eventual cognitive impairment.

METHOD

Neuroimaging markers of senile depression were identified through the systematic analysis of multimodal data including resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) and structural MRI (sMRI), and compared with clinical neural scales between older participants with and without depression.

RESULTS

Morphological analysis of gray matter by MRI showed significantly enlarged volumes in the left inferior temporal gyrus and right talus fissure, and reduced volumes in the left parahippocampal gyrus and lentiform globus pallidus in the older depression group compared with those in the control group. Comparison of fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation between the groups showed increased partial brain activity in the left posterior central gyrus and right anterior central gyrus in the depression group compared with those in the control group.

CONCLUSION

Older patients with depression showed significant organic changes and significantly increased local brain activity. There was a positive correlation between the intensity of local brain activity in the superior occipital gyrus and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores.

GUIDING SIGNIFICANCE

It is important to assess the organic changes and the degree of brain activity in specific brain regions in the clinical diagnosis of depression in the older adults, to adjust treatment plans early according to the incidence.

The divide between daily event appraisal and emotion experience in major depression

Appraisal theories predict that emotional experiences are tightly linked to context appraisals. However, depressed people tend to perceive a variety of emotional events more negatively and stressfully and their emotional experience has been described as context insensitive. This raises the question: how different is the intensity of context appraisals from related emotion experiences among depressed relative to healthy people? Surprisingly, we do not know how cohesive intensity of context appraisals and emotional experiences are in depression. In this study, we assessed differences in intensity of context appraisals and emotional experiences across 1634 daily events during three days within and between depressed participants (N = 41) and healthy controls (N = 33) using linear mixed models. Models compared intensities of stressfulness and unpleasantness appraisals to the intensity of negative affect, and intensity of pleasantness appraisals to the intensity of positive affect. Our findings partially supported our predictions of lower cohesiveness in depression: while intensities of pleasantness appraisals and positive affect were more alike among control participants, intensities of unpleasantness and stressfulness appraisals were more similar to the intensities of negative affect in the depressed group. Current work suggests that hedonic dysfunction in depression is possibly driven by a loosely tied positive context appraisal-emotion experience process.

Understanding the benefits of extrinsic emotion regulation in depression

Depression is a serious psychiatric illness that negatively affects people's feelings, thoughts, and actions. Providing emotion regulation support to others, also termed Extrinsic Emotion Regulation (EER), reduces depressive symptoms such as perseverative thinking and negative mood. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that EER may be especially beneficial for individuals with depression because it enhances the cognitive and affective processes known to be impaired in depression. Behavioral studies have shown that EER recruits processes related to cognitive empathy, intrinsic emotion regulation (IER), and reward, all impaired in depression. Neuroimaging data support these findings by showing that EER recruits brain regions related to these three processes, such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex which is associated with IER, the ventral striatum, which is associated with reward-related processes, and medial frontal regions related to cognitive empathy. This conceptual review paper sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of EER for individuals with depression and therefore offers novel avenues for treatment.

The Evaluation of Emotional Intelligence by the Analysis of Heart Rate Variability

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a critical social intelligence skill that refers to an individual's ability to assess their own emotions and those of others. While EI has been shown to predict an individual's productivity, personal success, and ability to maintain positive relationships, its assessment has primarily relied on subjective reports, which are vulnerable to response distortion and limit the validity of the assessment. To address this limitation, we propose a novel method for assessing EI based on physiological responses-specifically heart rate variability (HRV) and dynamics. We conducted four experiments to develop this method. First, we designed, analyzed, and selected photos to evaluate the ability to recognize emotions. Second, we produced and selected facial expression stimuli (i.e., avatars) that were standardized based on a two-dimensional model. Third, we obtained physiological response data (HRV and dynamics) from participants as they viewed the photos and avatars. Finally, we analyzed HRV measures to produce an evaluation criterion for assessing EI. Results showed that participants' low and high EI could be discriminated based on the number of HRV indices that were statistically different between the two groups. Specifically, 14 HRV indices, including HF (high-frequency power), lnHF (the natural logarithm of HF), and RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), were significant markers for discerning between low and high EI groups. Our method has implications for improving the validity of EI assessment by providing objective and quantifiable measures that are less vulnerable to response distortion.

Reliability of an Interpretation Bias Task of Ambiguous Faces and Its Relationship with Social Anxiety, Depression, and Looming Maladaptive Style

Social anxiety (SA) and depression have been associated with negative interpretation biases of social stimuli. Studies often assess these biases with ambiguous faces, as people with SA and depression tend to interpret such faces negatively. However, the test–retest reliability of this type of task is unknown. Our objectives were to develop a new interpretation bias task with ambiguous faces and analyse its properties in terms of test–retest reliability and in relation to SA, depression, and looming maladaptive style (LMS). Eight hundred sixty-four participants completed a task in which they had to interpret morphed faces as negative or positive on a continuum between happy and angry facial expressions. In addition, they filled out scales on SA, depressive symptoms, and LMS. Eighty-four participants completed the task again after 1–2 months. The test–retest reliability was moderate (r = .57–.69). The data revealed a significant tendency to interpret faces as negative for people with higher SA and depressive symptoms and with higher LMS. Longer response times to interpret the happy faces were positively associated with a higher level of depressive symptoms. The reliability of the present task was moderate. The results highlight associations between the bias interpretation task and SA, depression, and LMS.

A Single Session of Bifrontal tDCS Can Improve Facial Emotion Recognition in Major Depressive Disorder: An Exploratory Pilot Study

Emotional processing deficits are key features in major depressive disorder (MDD). Neuroimaging studies indicate that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a pivotal role in both depressive symptoms and emotional processing. Recently, transcranial Direct Current Stimulations (tDCS) applied over the DLPFCs have held the promise to alleviate the symptoms in patients with MDD, but the effect on emotional processing in the patients is unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of a single session of tDCS over the DLPFCs on the emotional processing in patients with treatment-resistant MDD. In a randomized sham-controlled study, 35 patients received a single 30 min session of either active (2 mA, n = 18) or sham tDCS (n = 17). The anode was placed over the left and the cathode over the right DLPFC. Emotional processing accuracy was measured by a facial emotion recognition (FER) task. We observed an overall improvement in FER performance after the active tDCS, but not the sham tDCS. These exploratory results suggest that a single session of tDCS over the DLPFCs may improve FER in MDD, a crucial function of social cognition. Further studies are needed to investigate whether this acute improvement of FER in response to a single tDCS session could translate into clinical benefits or predict remission following repeated sessions of stimulation.

Contrasting the amygdala activity and functional connectivity profile between antidepressant-free participants with major depressive disorder and healthy controls: A systematic review of comparative fMRI studies

Functional neuroimaging research suggests that the amygdala is implicated in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). This systematic review aimed to identify consistently reported amygdala activity and functional connectivity (FC) abnormalities in antidepressant-free participants with MDD as compared to healthy controls at baseline (i.e., before treatment initiation or experimental manipulation). A search for relevant published studies and registered clinical trials was conducted through OVID (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Embase) and ClinicalTrials.gov with an end date of March 7th, 2022. Fifty published studies and two registered clinical trials were included in this review. Participants with MDD frequently exhibited amygdala hyperactivity in response to negative stimuli, abnormal event-related amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) FC, and abnormal resting-state amygdala FC with the insula and the prefrontal, temporal, and parietal cortices. Decreased resting-state FC was consistently found between the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, cerebellum, and middle/inferior frontal gyri. Due to the limited number of studies examining resting-state amygdala activity and FC with specific subregions of interest, including those within the ACC, further investigation is warranted.

Neural circuits underpinning face tuning in male depression

Reading bodies and faces is essential for efficient social interactions, though it may be thought-provoking for individuals with depression. Yet aberrations in the face sensitivity and underwriting neural circuits are not well understood, in particular, in male depression. Here, we use cutting-edge analyses of time course and dynamic topography of gamma oscillatory neuromagnetic cortical activity during administration of a task with Arcimboldo-like images. No difference in face tuning was found between individuals with depression and their neurotypical peers. Furthermore, this behavioral outcome nicely dovetails with magnetoencephalographic data: at early processing stages, the gamma oscillatory response to images resembling a face was rather similar in patients and controls. These bursts originated primarily from the right medioventral occipital cortex and lateral occipital cortex. At later processing stages, however, its topography altered remarkably in depression with profound engagement of the frontal circuits. Yet the primary difference in depressive individuals as compared with their neurotypical peers occurred over the left middle temporal cortices, a part of the social brain, engaged in feature integration and meaning retrieval. The outcome suggests compensatory recruitment of neural resources in male depression.

Intact face detection in young patients with major depressive disorder revealed by the face-specific N170 component

It is unclear whether the face perceptual processing, especially the perceptual computation in early stages of processing faces, impaired in young patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). In this study, the face perception was investigated by analyzing the early ERP components in response to upright and inverted faces versus objects. Across all conditions, both the P1 and the N170 components were similar in MDD patients versus in the controls, regardless of latencies or amplitudes. Faces elicited larger N170 than objects (N170 face effect) and inverted faces elicited higher and delayed N170 (N170 inversion effect); however, none of these effects were modulated by depression. These findings suggest that there is intact perceptual mechanism of processing faces in young MDD patients, relying primarily on global/configural information versus non-face objects.

Emotion recognition bias depends on stimulus morphing strategy

Emotion recognition is vital for social interactions, and atypical (or biased) emotion recognition has been linked to mental health disorders including depression and anxiety. However, biases in emotion recognition vary across studies, and it is unclear whether this reflects genuine group differences in psychological processes underlying emotion recognition or differences in methodologies. One common method to measure biases in emotion recognition involves morphing a face between two emotional expressions in different ratios and asking participants to categorise the faces as belonging to one of the two emotion categories (‘direct-morphing’ method). However, this method creates morphed faces that are not ecologically valid. Alternatively, faces may be morphed through a neutral expression (‘morphing-through-neutral’ method), which is more ecologically valid since emotional expressions usually start from a neutral face. To compare these two approaches, we measured emotion recognition biases using two morphing techniques in 136 participants who also completed measures of anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9). Biases obtained using the two methods differed significantly: In the direct-morphing method, participants perceived the central 50% happy/50% angry face as slightly happy, whereas in the morphing-through-neutral method the neutral face was seen as angry. There were no associations between biases and depression or anxiety scores for either morphing method. This study is the first to directly compare emotion recognition biases obtained using two different morphing methods and is a first step towards reconciling discrepancies in the literature.

Positive Classification Advantage of Categorizing Emotional Faces in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder

This study investigated whether patients with MDD (major depressive disorder) have deficits in emotional face classification as well as the perceptual mechanism. We found that, compared with the control group, MDD patients exhibited slower speed and lower accuracy in emotional face classification. In normal controls, happy faces were classified faster than sad faces, i.e., positive classification advantage (PCA), which disappeared under the inverted condition. MDD patients showed PCA similar to the control group, although the inversion effects of happy and sad faces were more evident. These data suggest that the dysfunction of categorizing emotional faces in MDD patients could be due to general impairment in decoding facial expressions, reflecting the more common perceptual motion defects in face expression classification.

The effects of hypnotherapy compared to cognitive behavioral therapy in depression: a NIRS-study using an emotional gait paradigm

Hypnotherapy (HT) is a promising approach to treating depression, but so far, no data are available on the neuronal mechanisms of functional reorganization after HT for depressed patients. Here, 75 patients with mild to moderate depression, who received either HT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), were measured before and after therapy using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. We investigated the patients' cerebral activation during an emotional human gait paradigm. Further, rumination was included as predictor. Our results showed a decrease of functional connectivity (FC) between two regions that are crucial to emotional processing, the Extrastriate Body Area (EBA) and the Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS). This FC decrease was traced back to an activation change throughout therapy in the right STS, not the EBA and was only found in the HT group, depending on rumination: less ruminating HT patients showed a decrease in right STS activation, while highly ruminating patients showed an increase. We carefully propose that this activation change is due to the promotion of emotional experiences during HT, while in CBT a focus lay on activating behavior and changing negative cognitions. HT seemed to have had differential effects on the patients, depending on their rumination style: The increase of right STS activation in highly ruminating patients might mirror the improvement of impaired emotional processing, whilst the decrease of activation in low ruminating patients might reflect a dismissal of an over-compensation, associated with a hyperactivity before therapy. We conclude that HT affects emotional processing and this effect is moderated by rumination.

Impairment of response inhibition to emotional face stimuli in individuals with subclinical depression

Response inhibition, a crucial component of executive function, is closely related to personal impulse control, social adaption, and mental health. Previous studies have found response inhibition deficit in patients with major depressive disorder, but whether it also exists in individuals with subclinical depression (SD) remains unclear. This study aimed to identify the ability of response inhibition to emotional face stimuli both under explicit and implicit conditions in individuals with SD. Thirty-six subclinical depressed college students and 39 healthy individuals were recruited and administered the non-emotional, explicit, and implicit emotional stop-signal tasks (SSTs). Mixed-model analyses of variance were used to analyze the differences between and within groups. In implicit emotional SST, the results showed a significant longer stop-signal response time, a shorter stop-signal delay time, a shorter go reaction time, and a similar proportion of stop success in the SD group compared to healthy controls. However, the above indices showed no significant difference between the two groups in the non-emotional SST and explicit emotional SST. These findings suggest a possible defect of response inhibition in implicit emotional processing in individuals with SD, which may potentially serve as a marker of susceptibility to depression and thus be applied to early screening and intervention for major depressive disorder.

Lack of an Attention Bias Away From Relatively Negative Faces in Dysphoria Is Not Related to Biased Emotion Identification

Eye-tracking-based attention research has consistently shown a lack of a normative attentional bias away from dysphoric face stimuli in depression, characterizing the attention system of non-depressed individuals. However, this more equal attention allocation pattern could also be related to biased emotion identification, namely, an inclination of depressed individuals to attribute negative emotions to non-negative stimuli when processing mood-congruent stimuli. Here, we examined emotion identification as a possible mechanism associated with attention allocation when processing emotional faces in depression. Attention allocation and emotion identification of participants with high (HD; n = 30) and low (LD; n = 30) levels of depression symptoms were assessed using two corresponding tasks previously shown to yield significant findings in depression, using the same face stimuli (sad, happy, and neutral faces) across both tasks. We examined group differences on each task and possible between-task associations. Results showed that while LD participants dwelled longer on relatively positive faces compared with relatively negative faces on the attention allocation task, HD participants showed no such bias, dwelling equally on both. Trait anxiety did not affect these results. No group differences were noted for emotion identification, and no between-task associations emerged. Present results suggest that depression is characterized by a lack of a general attention bias toward relatively positive faces over relatively negative faces, which is not related to a corresponding bias in emotion identification.

How does the presence of a surgical face mask impair the perceived intensity of facial emotions?

The use of surgical-type face masks has become increasingly common during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent findings suggest that it is harder to categorise the facial expressions of masked faces, than of unmasked faces. To date, studies of the effects of mask-wearing on emotion recognition have used categorisation paradigms: authors have presented facial expression stimuli and examined participants’ ability to attach the correct label (e.g., happiness, disgust). While the ability to categorise particular expressions is important, this approach overlooks the fact that expression intensity is also informative during social interaction. For example, when predicting an interactant’s future behaviour, it is useful to know whether they are slightly fearful or terrified, contented or very happy, slightly annoyed or angry. Moreover, because categorisation paradigms force observers to pick a single label to describe their percept, any additional dimensionality within observers’ interpretation is lost. In the present study, we adopted a complementary emotion-intensity rating paradigm to study the effects of mask-wearing on expression interpretation. In an online experiment with 120 participants (82 female), we investigated how the presence of face masks affects the perceived emotional profile of prototypical expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. For each of these facial expressions, we measured the perceived intensity of all six emotions. We found that the perceived intensity of intended emotions (i.e., the emotion that the actor intended to convey) was reduced by the presence of a mask for all expressions except for anger. Additionally, when viewing all expressions except surprise, masks increased the perceived intensity of non-intended emotions (i.e., emotions that the actor did not intend to convey). Intensity ratings were unaffected by presentation duration (500ms vs 3000ms), or attitudes towards mask wearing. These findings shed light on the ambiguity that arises when interpreting the facial expressions of masked faces.

Correlations between facial emotion processing and biochemical abnormalities in untreated adolescent patients with major depressive disorder: A proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy study

BACKGROUND

Studies show that disturbances of the fronto-striato-thalamic-cerebellar circuit could be correlated to facial emotion processing (FEP) biases in major depressive disorder (MDD). Nevertheless, the underlying mechanism of natural metabolism-emotion relationships in adolescent MDD remains unclear.

METHODS

Thirty-seven adolescent patients with MDD and 30 healthy controls completed FEP tasks using the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System (CAFPS). Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-MRS) was also used to obtain ratios of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) /creatine (Cr) and choline (Cho) /Cr ratios in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), putamen, thalamus and cerebellum. Correlations between abnormal neurometabolic ratios and FEP were also computed.

RESULTS

Compared with the control group, the MDD group had significantly lower accuracy and perception intensity of happiness, and significantly higher accuracy of disgust and perception intensity of sad and fearful faces in FEP tasks. Compared to healthy controls, adolescent patients with MDD showed significantly lower NAA/Cr ratios in the left PFC, higher NAA/Cr ratios in the right thalamus, and higher Cho/Cr ratios in the right putamen, although there were no significant differences in metabolites in the ACC and cerebellum between two groups. In the MDD group, NAA/Cr ratios of the right thalamus were negatively correlated with happy reaction time and positively correlated with sad, anger, and fear intensity; Cho/Cr ratios in the right putamen were positively correlated with fear reaction time.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that FEP bias may exist in adolescents with MDD, while the impairment of FEP may be associated with abnormal metabolites in the fronto-striato-thalamic circuit.

COVID-19 and psychiatric disorders: The impact of face masks in emotion recognition face masks and emotion recognition in psychiatry

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, reading facial expressions has become more complex due to face masks covering the lower part of people's faces. A history of psychiatric illness has been associated with higher rates of complications, hospitalization, and mortality due to COVID-19. Psychiatric patients have well-documented difficulties reading emotions from facial expressions; accordingly, this study assesses how using face masks, such as those worn for preventing COVID-19 transmission, impacts the emotion recognition skills of patients with psychiatric disorders. To this end, the current study asked patients with bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and healthy individuals to identify facial emotions on face images with and without facial masks. Results demonstrate that the emotion recognition skills of all participants were negatively influenced by face masks. Moreover, the main insight of the study is that the impairment is crucially significant when patients with major depressive disorder and schizophrenia had to identify happiness at a low-intensity level. These findings have important implications for satisfactory social relationships and well-being. If emotions with positive valence are hardly understood by specific psychiatric patients, there is an even greater requirement for doctor-patient interactions in public primary care.

The neural correlation of emotion recognition ability and depressive symptoms-evidence from the HCP database

INTRODUCTION

Negative bias of emotional face is the core feature of depression, but its underlying neurobiological mechanism is still unclear. The neuroimaging findings of negative emotional recognition and depressive symptoms are inconsistent.

METHODS

The neural association between depressive symptoms and negative emotional bias were analyzed by measuring the associations between resting state functional connectivity (FC), brain structures, negative emotional bias, and depressive problems. Then, we performed a mediation analysis to assess the potential overlapping neuroimaging mechanisms.

RESULTS

We found a negative correlation between depressive symptoms and emotional recognition. Secondly, the structure and function of the inferior and lateral orbitofrontal gyrus are related to depressive symptoms and emotional recognition. Thirdly, the thickness of the inferior orbitofrontal cortex and the FC between the inferior orbitofrontal gyrus and fusiform gyrus, precuneate and cingulate gyrus mediated and even predicted the interaction between emotion recognition and depressive symptoms. Finally, in response to a negative stimulus, the activation of the frontal pole and precuneus lobe associated with the inferior orbitofrontal gyrus was higher in participants with depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSION

The core brain regions centered on the inferior orbitofrontal cortex such as middle temporal gyrus, precuneus lobe, frontal pole, insula and cingulate gyrus are the potential neuroimaging basis for the interaction between depressive symptoms and emotional recognition.

The emotional adaptation aftereffect discriminates between individuals with high and low levels of depressive symptoms

The adaptation aftereffect plays a critical role in human development and survival. Existing studies have found that, compared with general individuals, individuals with learning disability, autism and dyslexia show a smaller amount of non-affective-based cognitive adaptation aftereffect. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether individuals with depression or depression tendency show similar phenomenon in the adaptation aftereffect, and whether such depression tendency occurs in the non-affective-based cognitive or emotional adaptation aftereffect. To address this question, the present study conducted two experiments. Experiments 1A and 1B used the emotional facial expression adaptation paradigm to examine whether Chinese participants showed the emotional adaptation aftereffect and whether the emotional adaptation aftereffect was influenced by physical features of faces, respectively. Experiment 2 recruited two groups of participants, with high and low depression, respectively, to examine whether they showed differences in the emotional or cognitive adaptation aftereffect. Results showed that Chinese participants showed the typical emotional adaptation aftereffect, which was not influenced by physical features of faces. More importantly, compared to the low-depression group, the high-depression group showed a smaller emotional adaptation aftereffect, but the two groups showed a similar cognitive adaptation aftereffect. These results suggest that level of depressive symptoms is associated with the emotional adaptation aftereffect.

Inducing Affective Learning Biases with Cognitive Training and Prefrontal tDCS: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Background

Cognitive models of mood disorders emphasize a causal role of negative affective biases in depression. Computational work suggests that these biases may stem from a belief that negative events have a higher information content than positive events, resulting in preferential processing of and learning from negative outcomes. Learning biases therefore represent a promising target for therapeutic interventions. In this proof-of-concept study in healthy volunteers, we assessed the malleability of biased reinforcement learning using a novel cognitive training paradigm and concurrent transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Methods

In two studies, young healthy adults completed two sessions of negative (n = 20) or positive (n = 20) training designed to selectively increase learning from loss or win outcomes, respectively. During training active or sham tDCS was applied bilaterally to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Analyses tested for changes both in learning rates and win- and loss-driven behaviour. Potential positive/negative emotional transfer of win/loss learning was assessed by a facial emotion recognition task and mood questionnaires.

Results

Negative and positive training increased learning rates for losses and wins, respectively. With negative training, there was also a trend for win (but not loss) learning rates to decrease over successive task blocks. After negative training, there was evidence for near transfer in the form of an increase in loss-driven choices when participants performed a similar (untrained) task. There was no change in far transfer measures of emotional face processing or mood. tDCS had no effect on any aspect of behaviour.

Discussion and Conclusions

Negative training induced a mild negative bias in healthy adults as reflected in loss-driven choice behaviour. Prefrontal tDCS had no effect. Further research is needed to assess if this training procedure can be adapted to enhance learning from positive outcomes and whether effects translate to affective disorders.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1007/s10608-020-10146-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Confusion Effects of Facial Expression Recognition in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder and Healthy Controls

Facial expression recognition plays a crucial role in understanding the emotion of people, as well as in social interaction. Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have been repeatedly reported to be impaired in recognizing facial expressions. This study aimed to investigate the confusion effects between two facial expressions that presented different emotions and to compare the difference of confusion effect for each emotion pair between patients with MDD and healthy controls. Participants were asked to judge the emotion category of each facial expression in a two-alternative forced choice paradigm. Six basic emotions (i.e., happiness, fear, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust) were examined in pairs, resulting in 15 emotion combinations. Results showed that patients with MDD were impaired in the recognition of all basic facial expressions except for the happy expression. Moreover, patients with MDD were more inclined to confuse a negative emotion (i.e., anger and disgust) with another emotion as compared to healthy controls. These findings highlight the importance that patients with MDD show a deficit of sensitivity in distinguishing specific two facial expressions.

Facial emotion recognition in major depressive disorder: A meta-analytic review

BACKGROUND

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with difficulties in social and interpersonal functioning. Deficits in emotion processing may contribute to the development and maintenance of interpersonal difficulties in MDD. Although some studies have found that MDD is associated with deficits in recognition of emotion in faces, other studies have failed to find any impairment.

METHODS

The present meta-analysis of 23 studies, with 516 dysthymic/depressed participants and 614 euthymic control participants, examined facial emotion recognition accuracy in MDD. Several potential moderators were investigated, including type of emotion, symptom severity, patient status, method of diagnosis, type of stimulus, and stimulus duration.

RESULTS

Results showed that participants with MDD in inpatient settings (Hedges' g = -0.35) and with severe levels of symptom severity (g = -0.42) were less accurate in recognizing happy facial expressions of emotion (g = -0.25) compared to participants in outpatient settings (g = -0.24) and with mild symptoms of depression (g = -0.17). Studies that presented stimuli for longer durations (g = -0.26) tended to find lower accuracy levels in dysthymic/depressed, relative to euthymic, participants.

LIMITATIONS

Limitations include a lack of studies which examined gender identity, as well as other potential moderators.

CONCLUSIONS

Results of the current study support the existence of a broad facial emotion recognition deficit in individuals suffering from unipolar depression. Clinicians should be mindful of this and other research which suggests broad-based deficits in various forms of information processing, including attention, perception, and memory in depression.

A computational account of the mechanisms underlying face perception biases in depression

Here, we take a computational approach to understand the mechanisms underlying face perception biases in depression. Thirty participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 30 healthy control participants took part in three studies involving recognition of identity and emotion in faces. We used signal detection theory to determine whether any perceptual biases exist in depression aside from decisional biases. We found lower sensitivity to happiness in general, and lower sensitivity to both happiness and sadness with ambiguous stimuli. Our use of highly-controlled face stimuli ensures that such asymmetry is truly perceptual in nature, rather than the result of studying expressions with inherently different discriminability. We found no systematic effect of depression on the perceptual interactions between face expression and identity. We also found that decisional strategies used in our task were different for people with depression and controls, but in a way that was highly specific to the stimulus set presented. We show through simulation that the observed perceptual effects, as well as other biases found in the literature, can be explained by a computational model in which channels encoding positive expressions are selectively suppressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Reduced emotion recognition from nonverbal cues in anorexia nervosa

OBJECTIVE

Recent models of anorexia nervosa (AN) emphasise the role of reduced emotion recognition ability (ERA) in the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, methodological limitations impede conclusions from prior research. The current study tries to overcome these limitations by examining ERA with an audio-visual measure that focuses strictly on multimodal nonverbal cues and allows to differentiate between ERA for different emotion categories.

METHOD

Forty women with AN and 40 healthy women completed the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test. This test includes 83 video clips in which 10 actors express 14 different emotions while saying a pseudo-linguistic sentence without semantic meaning. All clips contain multimodal nonverbal cues (i.e., prosody, facial expression, gestures, and posture).

RESULTS

Patients with AN showed poorer ERA than the healthy control group (d = 0.71), particularly regarding emotions of negative valence (d = 0.26). Furthermore, a lower body weight (r = 0.41) and longer illness duration (ρ = -0.32) were associated with poorer ERA in the AN group.

CONCLUSIONS

Using an ecologically valid instrument, the findings of the study support illness models emphasising poor ERA in AN. Directly addressing ERA in the treatment of AN with targeted interventions may be promising.

The Power of Smiling: The Adult Brain Networks Underlying Learned Infant Emotionality

The perception of infant emotionality, one aspect of temperament, starts to form in infancy, yet the underlying mechanisms of how infant emotionality affects adult neural dynamics remain unclear. We used a social reward task with probabilistic visual and auditory feedback (infant laughter or crying) to train 47 nulliparous women to perceive the emotional style of six different infants. Using functional neuroimaging, we subsequently measured brain activity while participants were tested on the learned emotionality of the six infants. We characterized the elicited patterns of dynamic functional brain connectivity using Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis and found significant activity in a brain network linking the orbitofrontal cortex with the amygdala and hippocampus, where the probability of occurrence significantly correlated with the valence of the learned infant emotional disposition. In other words, seeing infants with neutral face expressions after having interacted and learned their various degrees of positive and negative emotional dispositions proportionally increased the activity in a brain network previously shown to be involved in pleasure, emotion, and memory. These findings provide novel neuroimaging insights into how the perception of happy versus sad infant emotionality shapes adult brain networks.

Autonomic dysregulation and impairments in the recognition of facial emotional expressions in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain

OBJECTIVES

Emotions are involved in the identification of safety cues in the environment, and are also related to social interaction through recognition of emotional facial expressions. Heart rate variability (HRV) can be an indicator of the adaptive response of the autonomic nervous system to stressful conditions, including pain. This study aimed to investigate the emotional processing in a sample of patients with chronic musculoskeletal by measuring the resting-state HRV and the ability to recognize facial emotion expressions.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study was composed of 40 participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain and 40 asymptomatic participants. Resting HRV was measured for 10 min. The facial emotion recognition task was presented in videos and included modification from a neutral expression to faces of fear, anger, sadness, happiness, and disgust. For the facial emotion recognition task, the hit rate (%) and response time for each emotional category were measured.

RESULTS

The symptomatic group had a mean high frequency (HF) lower (mean = 34.14; SD = 16.95; p<0.001) than the asymptomatic group (mean = 51.11; SD = 13.01; p<0.001). The emotional facial expressions of disgust (H (1, 80)=7.82; p<0.01), anger (H (1, 80)=13.56; p<0.01), sadness (H (1, 80)=6.58; p=0.01), and happiness (H (1, 80)=12.68; p<0.01) were those for which volunteers from the symptomatic group had a lower hit rate of correct answers compared to the asymptomatic group. The response time to corrected answers showed a major group effect (F (1.77)=21.11; p<0.001) and emotional category (F (4.308)=174.21; p<0.001), without presenting any interaction between the factors (F (4.308)=0.446; p=0.775). The symptomatic group was slower to perform the task of identifying facial emotional expression (7.066 s; SD = 1.188) than the participants in the asymptomatic group (6.298 s; SD = 1.203) for all emotional categories.

CONCLUSIONS

Participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain presented a lower vagal activity evidenced by HRV. Participants in the symptomatic group showed lower ability to recognize faces of disgust, anger, and sadness when compared to asymptomatic participants. Considering that individuals with low resting HF-HRV have difficulties with regulating their emotions, the lower vagal activity and lower ability to recognize faces of emotional expressions observed in chronic musculoskeletal pain may suggest alterations in emotional processing. This study may shed light on changes in the emotional processing and in the autonomic nervous system in this population.

Emotion and Word Recognition for Unprocessed and Vocoded Speech Stimuli

OBJECTIVES

Individuals with cochlear implants (CIs) show reduced word and auditory emotion recognition abilities relative to their peers with normal hearing. Modern CI processing strategies are designed to preserve acoustic cues requisite for word recognition rather than those cues required for accessing other signal information (e.g., talker gender or emotional state). While word recognition is undoubtedly important for communication, the inaccessibility of this additional signal information in speech may lead to negative social experiences and outcomes for individuals with hearing loss. This study aimed to evaluate whether the emphasis on word recognition preservation in CI processing has unintended consequences on the perception of other talker information, such as emotional state.

DESIGN

Twenty-four young adult listeners with normal hearing listened to sentences and either reported a target word in each sentence (word recognition task) or selected the emotion of the talker (emotion recognition task) from a list of options (Angry, Calm, Happy, and Sad). Sentences were blocked by task type (emotion recognition versus word recognition) and processing condition (unprocessed versus 8-channel noise vocoder) and presented randomly within the block at three signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in a background of speech-shaped noise. Confusion matrices showed the number of errors in emotion recognition by listeners.

RESULTS

Listeners demonstrated better emotion recognition performance than word recognition performance at the same SNR. Unprocessed speech resulted in higher recognition rates than vocoded stimuli. Recognition performance (for both words and emotions) decreased with worsening SNR. Vocoding speech resulted in a greater negative impact on emotion recognition than it did for word recognition.

CONCLUSIONS

These data confirm prior work that suggests that in background noise, emotional prosodic information in speech is easier to recognize than word information, even after simulated CI processing. However, emotion recognition may be more negatively impacted by background noise and CI processing than word recognition. Future work could explore CI processing strategies that better encode prosodic information and investigate this effect in individuals with CIs as opposed to vocoded simulation. This study emphasized the need for clinicians to consider not only word recognition but also other aspects of speech that are critical to successful social communication.

Different patterns of functional and structural alterations of hippocampal sub-regions in subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment with and without depression symptoms

In addition to cognitive impairments, depression symptoms were reported in subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment. Although hippocampal alterations were associated with cognitive decline in subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment, the neural mechanism underlying depression symptoms remains unclear. Thus, a cohort of 18 patients with depression symptoms, 17 patients without depression symptoms, and 23 normal controls was used. Functionally, significantly altered resting-state functional connectivity between hippocampal emotional sub-region and right posterior cingulate cortex, between hippocampal cognitive sub-region and right inferior parietal gyrus and between hippocampal perceptual sub-region and left inferior temporal gyrus were identified among three groups. Structurally, significantly altered structural associations between hippocampal emotional sub-region and 6 frontal regions/right pole part of superior temporal gyrus/right inferior occipital gyrus, between hippocampal cognitive sub-region and right orbital part of inferior frontal gyrus /right anterior cingulate cortex, and between hippocampal perceptual and right orbital part of inferior frontal gyrus / left inferior temporal gyrus / left thalamus were identified among the three groups. Further analyses also showed correlations between functional connectivity and depression symptoms and/or cognitive impairments of patients. Together, these results showed different patterns of functional and structural alterations of the hippocampal sub-regions in the subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment with and without depression, which might be specially associated with the depression symptoms and cognitive impairments in these patients.

Seeing sadness: Comorbid effects of loneliness and depression on emotional face processing

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE

Loneliness and depression are highly comorbid, and both are associated with social processing deficits. However, there is a paucity of research aimed at differentiating emotional face-processing deficits that are comorbid to loneliness and depression versus those attributable to loneliness or depression only.

METHODS

502 participants were recruited and screened for loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory). Of those, seventy-seven took part in a fully crossed 2 (loneliness; low/high) * 2 (depression; low/high) factorial between-subjects design study to assess individual and comorbid effects of loneliness and depression on a computerized morphed facial emotion processing task.

RESULTS

Comorbidity was confirmed by a significant positive correlation between loneliness and depression. On the emotion processing task, loneliness was associated with an increased accuracy for sad faces and decreased accuracy for fearful faces and depression with decreased accuracy in identifying happy faces. Comorbid loneliness and depression resulted in an increased misattribution of neutral faces as sad, an effect that was also seen in those who were either only lonely or only depressed.

CONCLUSION

This if the first study to tease out comorbid versus independent effects of loneliness and depression on social information processing. To the extent that emotional biases may act as risk factors for detrimental outcomes, our findings highlight the importance of treating both loneliness and depression.

Comparing Emotion Recognition and Word Recognition in Background Noise

Purpose Word recognition in quiet and in background noise has been thoroughly investigated in previous research to establish segmental speech recognition performance as a function of stimulus characteristics (e.g., audibility). Similar methods to investigate recognition performance for suprasegmental information (e.g., acoustic cues used to make judgments of talker age, sex, or emotional state) have not been performed. In this work, we directly compared emotion and word recognition performance in different levels of background noise to identify psychoacoustic properties of emotion recognition (globally and for specific emotion categories) relative to word recognition. Method Twenty young adult listeners with normal hearing listened to sentences and either reported a target word in each sentence or selected the emotion of the talker from a list of options (angry, calm, happy, and sad) at four signal-to-noise ratios in a background of white noise. Psychometric functions were fit to the recognition data and used to estimate thresholds (midway points on the function) and slopes for word and emotion recognition. Results Thresholds for emotion recognition were approximately 10 dB better than word recognition thresholds, and slopes for emotion recognition were half of those measured for word recognition. Low-arousal emotions had poorer thresholds and shallower slopes than high-arousal emotions, suggesting greater confusion when distinguishing low-arousal emotional speech content. Conclusions Communication of a talker's emotional state continues to be perceptible to listeners in competitive listening environments, even after words are rendered inaudible. The arousal of emotional speech affects listeners' ability to discriminate between emotion categories.

Left superior temporal sulcus morphometry mediates the impact of anxiety and depressive symptoms on sleep quality in healthy adults

Anxiety and depressive symptoms may predispose individuals to sleep disturbance. Understanding how these emotional symptoms affect sleep quality, especially the underlying neural basis, could support the development of effective treatment. The aims of the present study were therefore to investigate potential changes in brain morphometry associated with poor sleep quality and whether this structure played a mediating role between the emotional symptoms and sleep quality. One hundred and forty-one healthy adults (69 women, mean age = 26.06 years, SD = 6.36 years) were recruited. A structural magnetic resonance imaging investigation was performed, and self-reported measures of anxiety, depressive symptoms and sleep quality were obtained for each participant. Whole-brain regression analysis revealed that worse sleep quality was associated with thinner cortex in left superior temporal sulcus (STS). Furthermore, the thickness of left STS mediated the association between the emotional symptoms and sleep quality. A subsequent commonality analysis showed that physiological component of the depressive symptoms had the greatest influence on sleep quality. In conclusion, thinner cortex in left STS may represent a neural substrate for the association between anxiety and depressive symptoms and poor sleep quality and may thus serve as a potential target for neuromodulatory treatment of sleep problems.

Face Tuning in Depression

The latest COVID-19 pandemic reveals that unexpected changes elevate depression bringing people apart, but also calling for social sharing. Yet the impact of depression on social cognition and functioning is not well understood. Assessment of social cognition is crucial not only for a better understanding of major depressive disorder (MDD), but also for screening, intervention, and remediation. Here by applying a novel experimental tool, a Face-n-Food task comprising a set of images bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style, we assessed the face tuning in patients with MDD and person-by-person matched controls. The key benefit of these images is that single components do not trigger face processing. Contrary to common beliefs, the outcome indicates that individuals with depression express intact face responsiveness. Yet, while in depression face sensitivity is tied with perceptual organization, in typical development, it is knotted with social cognition capabilities. Face tuning in depression, therefore, may rely upon altered behavioral strategies and underwriting brain mechanisms. To exclude a possible camouflaging effect of female social skills, we examined gender impact. Neither in depression nor in typical individuals had females excelled in face tuning. The outcome sheds light on the origins of the face sensitivity and alterations in social functioning in depression and mental well-being at large. Aberrant social functioning in depression is likely to be the result of deeply-rooted maladaptive strategies rather than of poor sensitivity to social signals. This has implications for mental well-being under the current pandemic conditions.

The impact of COVID-19 social isolation on aspects of emotional and social cognition

The present study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 social isolation upon aspects of emotional and social cognitive function. We predicted that greater impairments in emotional and social cognition would be observed in people who experienced more disruption to their usual social connectivity during COVID-19 social isolation. Healthy volunteers (N = 92) without prior mental health problems completed assessments online in their own homes during the most stringent period of the first COVID-19 "lockdown" in the UK (March - May 2020). Measures included two questionnaires probing levels of social isolation, anxiety levels, as well as five neuropsychological tasks assessing emotional and social cognition. Reduced positive bias in emotion recognition was related to reduced contact with friends, household size and communication method during social isolation. In addition, reduced positive bias for attention to emotional faces was related to frequency of contact with friends during social isolation. Greater cooperative behaviour in an ultimatum game was associated with more frequent contact with both friends and family during social isolation. The present study provides important insights into the detrimental effects of subjective and objective social isolation upon affective cognitive processes.

Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression

BACKGROUND

Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, in general, to find evidence for increased spatial attention toward negative facial expressions and reduced spatial attention toward positive facial expressions in depressed individuals. Eye-tracking analyses allow for a more detailed examination of visual search processes over time during the perception of multiple stimuli and can provide more specific insights into the attentional processing of multiple emotional stimuli.

METHODS

Gaze behavior of 38 clinically depressed individuals and 38 gender matched healthy controls was compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Pictures of happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions were utilized as target and distractor stimuli. Four distinct measures of eye gaze served as dependent variables: (a) latency to the target face, (b) number of distractor faces fixated prior to fixating the target, (c) mean fixation time per distractor face before fixating the target and (d) mean fixation time on the target.

RESULTS

Depressed and healthy individuals did not differ in their manual response times. Our eye-tracking data revealed no differences between study groups in attention guidance to emotional target faces as well as in the duration of attention allocation to emotional distractor and target faces. However, depressed individuals fixated fewer distractor faces before fixating the target than controls, regardless of valence of expressions.

CONCLUSIONS

Depressed individuals seem to process angry and happy expressions in crowds of faces mainly in the same way as healthy individuals. Our data indicate no biased attention guidance to emotional targets and no biased processing of angry and happy distractors and targets in depression during visual search. Under conditions of clear task demand depressed individuals seem to be able to allocate and guide their attention in crowds of angry and happy faces as efficiently as healthy individuals.