Reduced eye gaze during facial emotion recognition in chronic depression: Effects of intranasal oxytocin

Abstract

Chronic depression disorders (CDD) are characterized by impaired social cognitive functioning. Visual attention during social perception is altered in clinical depression and is known to be sensitive to intranasal treatment with oxytocin (OT). The present study thus investigated potential alterations in gaze preferences during a standardized facial emotion recognition (FER) task using remote eye tracking in patients with CDD and the effect of a single dose of intranasal OT (compared to placebo). In emotion recognition, CDD patients were not more impaired than healthy controls, and there was no OT effect. However, CDD patients (with placebo) demonstrated less attentional preference for the eye region during FER than healthy controls, which was not apparent in the CDD group after OT treatment. Our results suggest that despite largely preserved basic facial emotions recognition, attention in social perception may be altered in CDD, and that this bias may be sensitive to OT treatment. These findings highlight OTs potential as a means of augmenting psychotherapy.