Distinct facial processing related negative cognitive bias in first-episode and recurrent major depression: evidence from the N170 ERP component

Jiu Chen; Wentao Ma; Yan Zhang; Xingqu Wu; Dunhong Wei; Guangxiong Liu; Zihe Deng; Zhijun Zhang; Laiqi Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109176

Distinct facial processing related negative cognitive bias in first-episode and recurrent major depression: evidence from the N170 ERP component

PLoS One. 2014 Oct 14;9(10):e109176. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109176. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Jiu Chen¹, Wentao Ma², Yan Zhang², Xingqu Wu², Dunhong Wei², Guangxiong Liu², Zihe Deng², Zhijun Zhang¹, Laiqi Yang²

Affiliations

¹ Neurologic Department of Affiliated ZhongDa Hospital, Neuropsychiatric Institute and Medical School of Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.
² Center for Mental Disease Control and Prevention, Third Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, Baoji, Shaanxi Province, China.

Abstract

Background: States of depression are associated with increased sensitivity to negative events. For this novel study, we have assessed the relationship between the number of depressive episodes and the dysfunctional processing of emotional facial expressions.

Methodology/principal findings: We used a visual emotional oddball paradigm to manipulate the processing of emotional information while event-related brain potentials were recorded in 45 patients with first episode major depression (F-MD), 40 patients with recurrent major depression (R-MD), and 46 healthy controls (HC). Compared with the HC group, F-MD patients had lower N170 amplitudes when identifying happy, neutral, and sad faces; R-MD patients had lower N170 amplitudes when identifying happy and neutral faces, but higher N170 amplitudes when identifying sad faces. F-MD patients had longer N170 latencies when identifying happy, neutral, and sad faces relative to the HC group, and R-MD patients had longer N170 latencies when identifying happy and neutral faces, but shorter N170 latencies when identifying sad faces compared with F-MD patients. Interestingly, a negative relationship was observed between N170 amplitude and the depressive severity score for identification of happy faces in R-MD patients while N170 amplitude was positively correlated with the depressive severity score for identification of sad faces in F-MD and R-MD patients. Additionally, the deficits of N170 amplitude for sad faces positively correlated with the number of depressive episodes in R-MD patients.

Conclusion/significance: These results provide new evidence that having more recurrent depressive episodes and serious depressive states are likely to aggravate the already abnormal processing of emotional facial expressions in patients with depression. Moreover, it further suggests that the impaired processing as indexed by N170 amplitude for positive face identification may be a potentially useful biomarker for predicting propagation of depression while N170 amplitude for negative face identification could be a potential biomarker for depression recurrence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Demography
Depressive Disorder, Major / diagnosis*
Depressive Disorder, Major / physiopathology
Electroencephalography
Emotions
Evoked Potentials / physiology*
Facial Expression*
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Recurrence
Regression Analysis
Software
Young Adult

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Special Research Fund for Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chinese Army (Grant no. 10ZYX108); the Key Program for Clinical Medicine and Science and Tochnology: Jiangsu Provence Clinical Medical Research Center (Grant no. BL2013025); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 91132000). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.