The Neural Correlates of the Recognition of Emotional Intensity Deficits in Major Depression: An ERP Study

Abstract

Purpose Deficits in facial emotional intensity recognition have been associated with social cognition in patients with major depression. The study examined multiple event-related potential (ERP) components in patients with major depression and investigated the relationships between ERPs, social cognition, and clinical features. Participants and Methods Thirty-one patients met DSM-IV diagnosis of depression and 31 healthy participants completed the emotion intensity recognition task (EIRT), while ERPs were recorded. Data on ERP components (P100, N170, P200, and P300) were analyzed. Results The behavioral results showed that patients with major depression performed worse on EIRT, including all six categories of emotions (sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, anger, and fear), compared to healthy participants. The ERP results showed that patients with major depression exhibited higher P100 amplitudes for sad and happy faces than healthy participants; P300 amplitudes induced by sad and surprise faces were also higher than in healthy participants, mainly in the central and temporal lobes. A positive correlation was found between sadness intensity scores and P100 amplitudes in patients with major depression. Conclusion Patients with major depression are biased in their identification of facial expressions indicating emotional intensity. Specifically, they have emotional biases in the early and late stages of cognitive processing, mainly in the form of sensitivity to sad stimuli. It may lead to a persistent rumination of sadness that is detrimental to the remission of depression. Additionally, patients with major depression devote different amounts of cognitive resources for different intensities of sad faces during the preconscious stage of cognitive processing. The more intense their perception of sadness, the more cognitive resources they devote. Therefore, the assessment of the intensity of facial expressions is an important research topic, with clinical implications on social cognitive function in patients with major depression.

Disrupted properties of functional brain networks in major depressive disorder during emotional face recognition: an EEG study via graph theory analysis

“…As an electrophysiological neuroimaging technique, event-related potential (ERP) obtained by the average of event-related electroencephalography (EEG) epochs directly reflects neuronal electrical activity with high temporal resolution, which can allow researchers to capture the dynamic changes of brain activity at a sub-second time scale. Until now, numerous research studies on emotional face processing in MDD have mainly focused on ERP components, such as P1, P2, N170, P3, and late positive potential (LPP) ( Zhao et al, 2015 ; Zhang et al, 2016 ; Burkhouse et al, 2017 ; Ao et al, 2020 ; Tong et al, 2020 ; Chilver et al, 2022 ; Li et al, 2023 ), most of which consistently reported the abnormality of N170 in patients with MDD. Specifically, a number of studies showed the N170 component closely associated with the neural mechanisms of facial expression identification ( Rossion, 2014 ; Damaskinou and Watling, 2018 ; Lai et al, 2020 ).…”

Effects of peer victimization on cortical processing of social-evaluative stress in patients with major depressive disorder

“…In line with this finding, enhanced mean P100 amplitudes were previously reported in physically abused children ( Pollak and Tolley-Schell, 2003 ). With respect to peculiarities in patients with MDD on the P100 component, previous research indicated greater amplitudes in response to negative stimuli in depressed patients ( Dai and Feng, 2012 ; Zhang et al ., 2016 ; Li et al ., 2023 ). In particular, words and faces presented in threatening contexts elicited larger P100 responses in depressed individuals than in healthy controls ( Auerbach et al ., 2015 ; Iffland et al ., 2021 ).…”