The Relationship Between Facial Expression and Cognitive Function in Patients With Depression.

Ma Ruihua,Shi Jing,Liu Panqi,Tian Li,Wang Zhiren,Guo Hua,Yang Fude,Tan Shuping,Zhao Meng,Chen Nan,Liu Sijia,Tan Yunlong

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648346

Abstract

Objective: Considerable evidence has shown that facial expression recognition ability and cognitive function are impaired in patients with depression. We aimed to investigate the relationship between facial expression recognition and cognitive function in patients with depression.Methods: A total of 51 participants (i.e., 31 patients with depression and 20 healthy control subjects) underwent facial expression recognition tests, measuring anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness, and surprise. The Chinese version of the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB), which assesses seven cognitive domains, was used.Results: When compared with a control group, there were differences in the recognition of the expressions of sadness (p = 0.036), happiness (p = 0.041), and disgust (p = 0.030) in a depression group. In terms of cognitive function, the scores of patients with depression in the Trail Making Test (TMT; p < 0.001), symbol coding (p < 0.001), spatial span (p < 0.001), mazes (p = 0.007), the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (BVMT; p = 0.001), category fluency (p = 0.029), and continuous performance test (p = 0.001) were lower than those of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant. The accuracy of sadness and disgust expression recognition in patients with depression was significantly positively correlated with cognitive function scores. The deficits in sadness expression recognition were significantly correlated with the TMT (p = 0.001, r = 0.561), symbol coding (p = 0.001, r = 0.596), maze (p = 0.015, r = 0.439), and the BVMT (p = 0.044, r = 0.370). The deficits in disgust expression recognition were significantly correlated with impairments in the TMT (p = 0.005, r = 0.501) and symbol coding (p = 0.001, r = 0.560).Conclusion: Since cognitive function is impaired in patients with depression, the ability to recognize negative facial expressions declines, which is mainly reflected in processing speed, reasoning, problem-solving, and memory.

Highlights

Facial expression recognition isx considered an essential skill for successful social interactions, and it represents how others think of an individual and can potentially provide vague self-referential cues for making inferences and decisions
Except for the weak correlation between disgust expression and cognitive score (p = 0.049, r = 0.445), other facial expressions were not correlated with cognitive scores in the control group
We examined the association between cognitive function and recognition of emotions in facial expressions for patients with depression

Summary

Introduction

Facial expression recognition isx considered an essential skill for successful social interactions, and it represents how others think of an individual and can potentially provide vague self-referential cues for making inferences and decisions. In the 1970s, Ekman and Friesen proposed that human facial expressions contain six basic emotions, namely, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. These basic emotions are stable across cultures and races (Goghari and Sponheim, 2013). The facial emotion recognition deficit is a disorder, in which individuals experience difficulty in recognizing the emotional states of other people through facial expressions. Such a deficit may lead to a misunderstanding of the social behavior of others and interfere with the social function of an individual (Behere, 2015; Lee et al, 2020). The deficits in facial expression recognition have been found to be associated with depression and other mental illnesses (Cotter et al, 2018; Hayashi et al, 2021)

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