Smoking history, and not depression, is related to deficits in detection of happy and sad faces

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that chronic cigarette smoking and major depressive disorder (MDD) are each associated with cognitive decrements. Further, these conditions co-occur commonly, though mechanisms in the comorbid condition are poorly understood. There may be distinct, additive, or overlapping factors underlying comorbid cigarette smoking and MDD. The present study investigated the impact of smoking and MDD on executive function and emotion processing. Participants (N=198) were grouped by diagnostic category (MDD and healthy controls, HC) and smoking status (ever-smokers, ES and never-smokers, NS). Participants completed the Facial Emotion Perception Test (FEPT), a measure of emotional processing, and the parametric Go/No-go task (PGNG), a measure of executive function. FEPT performance was analyzed using ANCOVA with accuracy and reaction time as separate dependent variables. Repeated measures MANCOVA was conducted for PGNG with performance measure and task level as dependent variables. Analyses for each task included diagnostic and smoking group as independent variables, and gender was controlled for. Results for FEPT reveal lower overall accuracy was found for ES relative to NS, though MDD did not differ from HC. Post-hoc analyses revealed ES were poorer at identifying happy and sad, but not fearful or angry, faces. For PGNG, poorer performance was observed in MDD relative to HC in response time to Go targets, but there were no differences for ES and NS. Interaction of diagnosis and smoking group was not observed for performance on either task. The results of this study provide preliminary evidence for distinctive cognitive decrements in smokers and individuals with depression.

Comparison of Ecological Micro-Expression Recognition in Patients with Depression and Healthy Individuals

“…Individuals’ performance in ecological MEs recognition was affected by the presence of depression. In terms of ACC, there was no significant difference between the patients and healthy individuals, which was consistent with the findings of patients processing ordinary facial expressions (Leppänen et al, 2004 ; Meyers et al, 2015 ; Robinson et al, 2015 ), which indicated that individuals’ ACC of recognizing ecological MEs was not affected by the presence of depression. In addition, a review (Bourke et al, 2010 ) revealed that compared with healthy individuals, patients with depression allocate more (less) attention resources to sad (pleasant) facial expressions, while processing ordinary facial expressions, but numerous studies have shown that the ACC of recognizing ordinary facial expressions showed no significant difference between these two groups, which supports the results of the present study to some extent.…”

Ecological micro-expression recognition characteristics of young adults with subthreshold depression

“…There was no significant difference in the ACC of identifying ecological MEs between individuals with subthreshold depression and healthy individuals. This was not only consistent with the features of processing ordinary facial expressions in depressive patients demonstrated by previous researchers [51, 52] but was also corroborated by the characteristics of processing ecological MEs in those patients [21]. There was also no significant difference in the RT between individuals with subthreshold depression and healthy individuals.…”

Drug effects on responses to emotional facial expressions

“…A recent study reported that nondependent smokers exhibited impaired recognition of happy and sad faces compared with adults who had never smoked (Meyers et al , 2015), suggesting that a history of smoking might contribute to changes in emotional recognition. It remains to be determined whether chronic exposure to nicotine and nicotine dependence affect appraisal and processing of social cues.…”