Biased processing of sad faces: An ERP marker candidate for depression susceptibility

Abstract

Depression has been associated with task-relevant increased attention toward negative information, reduced attention toward positive information, or reduced inhibition of task-irrelevant negative information. This study employed behavioural and psychophysiological measures (event-related potentials; ERP) to examine whether groups with risk factors for depression (past depression, current dysphoria) would show attentional biases or inhibitory deficits related to viewing facial expressions. In oddball task blocks, young adult participants responded to an infrequently presented target emotion (e.g., sad) and inhibited responses to an infrequently presented distracter emotion (e.g., happy) in the context of frequently presented neutral stimuli. Previous depression was uniquely associated with greater P3 ERP amplitude following sad targets, reflecting a selective attention bias. Also, dysphoric individuals less effectively inhibited responses to sad distracters than non-dysphoric individuals according to behavioural data, but not psychophysiological data. Results suggest that depression risk may be most reliably characterised by increased attention toward others' depressive facial emotion.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Vulnerability
• Attention
• Facial emotion
• Neuroscience
• ERP

We wish to thank Shandi Appier, George Bradshaw, Bryan Candea-Kromm, Andrew Garcia, Aaron Gates, Matt Judah, Whitney Kearney, Kayla Meyer, Elizabeth Powell, and Addie Timmons for their invaluable help in collecting and cleaning study data.

We wish to thank Shandi Appier, George Bradshaw, Bryan Candea-Kromm, Andrew Garcia, Aaron Gates, Matt Judah, Whitney Kearney, Kayla Meyer, Elizabeth Powell, and Addie Timmons for their invaluable help in collecting and cleaning study data.

Notes

¹ P3 effects specific to rare task-irrelevant stimuli (distracters vs. standards) were not of primary conceptual interest to the present paper. However, results of distracter P3 amplitude analysis are available in supplemental materials.

² Although this study was primarily interested in how much more one pays attention to salient target stimuli than non-salient standard stimuli (i.e., P3 difference wave), separate analyses of amplitude for strictly targets were also conducted with respect to planned comparisons. Consistent with P3 difference wave analyses, the depressed group showed greater amplitude in the P3 window following sad targets than following happy targets, F(1, 27) = 9.17, p < .05, d = 0.58, while the non-depressed group did not (F < 1). Also, with between-groups analyses, the previously depressed and never depressed groups did not differ in amplitude to happy targets or to neutral standard stimuli (Fs < 1.05). Unlike P3 difference wave analyses, the mean amplitude difference for sad targets between formerly depressed and never depressed groups only approached statistical significance, F(1, 53) = 2.70, p = .11, d = 0.45).