Neural Correlates of Mental State Decoding in Dysphoria: An Event‐Related Potential Study

Abstract

Depression is often associated with profound social and interpersonal functioning impairments. Negative interpersonal experiences may lead depressed individuals to withdraw from social interaction, which may in turn exacerbate the depression state (Rippere, 1980). As a result, it is of theoretical and clinical importance to understand the mechanisms underlying these social deficits. Researchers have applied the theory‐of‐mind framework to better understand the impaired social functioning in depressed individuals. Theory of mind refers to the everyday ability to attribute mental states (i.e., beliefs, desires, emotions) to others to both understand and predict their behaviour (Wellman, 1990). Research has found that individuindividuals with dysphoria (i.e. elevated scores on a measure of depression symptoms, but not necessarily a diagnosis of clinical depression) demonstrate enhanced mental state judgments (Harkness, Sabbagh, Jacobson, Chowdrey, & Chen, 2005). This study will determine neural mechanisms that may underlie this phenomenon by examining whether differences in brain activity exist between dysphoric and nondysphoric groups during mental states decoding. I will record electrophysiological data while participants are judging the mental states from pictures of eyes. Based on previous research (Sabbagh, Moulson, & Harkness, 2004), I anticipate that mental state decoding will be associated with the right inferior frontal and right anterior temporal regions of the brain. Furthermore, I hypothesize that dysphoric individuals will have greater activations in these brain regions and make significantly more accurate judgments than nondysphoric individuals when making mental state judgments.