Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the neurophysiological characteristics of young people with depressive personality disorder using event-related potentials (ERP). To explore the effects of visual-emotional words on ERP, mainly N350, we recruited 19 individuals with a depressive personality disorder and 10 healthy controls. ERP were recorded while the subjects took decisions on target words that were classified into three categories: emotionally positive, negative, and neutral. The ERP signals were then separately averaged according to the subjects’ classifications. Data analysis showed that the amplitude of N350 was larger in response to positive and negative words than to neutral words. The latency of N350 was longer in negative words, in contrast with positive and neutral words. However, no difference was found between the two groups. These results suggest that neurophysiological characteristics of young people with a depressive personality disorder in visual-emotional word processing have not yet been influenced by their personality traits. To some extent, N350 reflected semantic processes and was not sensitive to participants’ mood state.
Highlights
A great deal of evidence has accumulated in clinical neurophysiology concerning cognitive functions in depressive patients (Mao et al, 2005; Krompinger and Simons, 2011; Dai and Feng, 2012; Zhao et al, 2015; Kiang et al, 2017; Xie et al, 2018)
One of the goals of the present study was to bridge this gap. Another reason why we examined N350 was that a number of studies suggested that both a word’s emotional content and the participants’ emotional state may affect the N400 eventrelated potentials (ERP) response (Chung et al, 1996; Federmeier et al, 2001; Kiefer, 2002)
ERPs Evoked by Mood Words in DPS and Control Groups
Summary
A great deal of evidence has accumulated in clinical neurophysiology concerning cognitive functions in depressive patients (Mao et al, 2005; Krompinger and Simons, 2011; Dai and Feng, 2012; Zhao et al, 2015; Kiang et al, 2017; Xie et al, 2018). Only a few studies have focused on the depressive personality disorder (DPS) in healthy young populations (Shimizu et al, 2006). College is an important period for individuals in their lifelong psychological development. The purpose of the present study is to explore the neurophysiological characteristics of young people with depressive personality disorder. Similar to clinically depressed subjects, individuals with depressive personality traits are usually somber, restrained, and socially regressive (Noordhof et al, 2018). It was found that depressive patients had smaller N400s than controls, for negative adjectives, suggesting that depression is
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