Emotional Processing Biases Research Articles

Depression is associated with increased sensitivity to signals of disgust: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Emotions of fear and disgust are related to core symptoms of depression. The neurobiological mechanisms of these associations are poorly understood. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study aimed at examining the Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to facial expressions of fear and disgust in patients with major depressive disorder. Nine patients in an episode of major depression and nine healthy controls underwent two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments where they judged the gender of facial identities displaying different degrees (mild, strong) of fear or disgust, intermixed with non-emotional faces. Compared with healthy controls, patients with depression demonstrated greater activation in left insula, left orbito-frontal gyrus, left middle/inferior temporal gyrus, and right middle/inferior temporal gyrus to expressions of strong disgust. Depressed patients also demonstrated reduced activation in left inferior parietal lobe to mildly fearful faces. Enhanced activation to facial expressions of disgust may reflect an emotion processing bias that suggests high relevance of emotion of disgust to depression.

Cognitive mechanisms underlying the emotional effects of bias modification

AbstractIn this study we assessed the cognitive mechanisms underlying the affective consequences of modifying emotional processing biases. During ‘active’ training participants selected either threatening or non‐threatening meanings of emotionally ambiguous words, in contrast to ‘passive’ conditions in which participants read unambiguous words with equivalent valenced meanings. Both methods enhanced access to training‐congruent primed emotional meanings, as assessed in a lexical decision task, although neither method displayed evidence of an induced interpretive bias as it is usually understood. However, consistent with previous research, the methods differed in their emotional consequences: Active training had greater effects on anxiety while viewing an accident video than did passive exposure. We interpret these results to suggest that both forms of training enhance priming of a valenced category, but only active conditions induce an implicit production rule to generate and/or select emotional meanings, and that it is this latter process that is critical to the modification of emotionality. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Semantic processing of emotional words in depression and schizophrenia

Major depressive disorder is associated with dysfunction in brain regions involved in language and emotion processing. Despite evidence of emotion processing biases in depression, neurophysiological evidence of language dysfunction for emotional words in depression has been inconsistent. This series of three studies evaluated whether depressed individuals exhibited abnormal semantic processing of emotionally-valenced words. During the passive viewing of sentences with mood congruent and incongruent sentence endings, the N400 component of the event-related brain potential was measured in patients with depression, dysthymia, or schizophrenia and in healthy controls. In each study, results revealed normal semantic processing in depression. That is, N400 was similar for both mood-incongruent (positive and neutral) endings and mood-congruent (negative) endings. In contrast, the small sample of individuals with schizophrenia exhibited a significantly exaggerated N400 for negative word endings compared to the depressed and healthy control groups. These data suggest anomalies in semantic network interactions with emotion processing in schizophrenia.

Attentional Bias in Later Stages of Emotional Information Processing in Female Adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder

Background: Bias in emotional information processing has been described in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study investigates whether adolescent patients with a diagnosis of BPD demonstrate abnormalities in attentional maintenance in viewing emotional faces. Sampling and Methods: Thirty female adolescents with a diagnosis of BPD, 29 female adolescents with mixed psychiatric diagnoses, and 30 healthy participants were tested with the visual dot probe task. The task involved showing photographs of actors with faces depicting neutral, negative, and positive expressions for 1,500 ms each. Results: Attentional bias to negative faces was not generally associated with BPD, but patients with BPD did show a strong correlation between current mood and attentional bias to negative faces. Only in adolescents with BPD did attention to negative faces narrow when they were currently in a state of negative mood. Conversely, both control groups avoided negative faces in conjunction with a decline in positive mood. Conclusions: This study indicates that borderline pathology is linked to an inability to disengage attention from negative facial expressions during attentional maintenance when in a negative mood. Based on these findings, mood-dependent therapeutic interventions focusing on attentional processes may represent a useful add-on to established therapies in patients with BPD.

Effects of erythropoietin on emotional processing biases in patients with major depression: an exploratory fMRI study

Erythropoietin (Epo) has neurotrophic effects and may be a novel therapeutic agent in the treatment of depression. We have found antidepressant-like effects of Epo on emotional processing and mood in healthy volunteers. The current study aimed to explore the effects of Epo on the neural processing of emotional information in depressed patients. Seventeen patients with acute major depressive disorder were randomised to receive Epo (40,000 IU) or saline iv in a double-blind, parallel-group design. On day 3, we assessed neural responses to positive, negative and neutral pictures during fMRI followed by picture recall after the scan. Mood and blood parameters were assessed at baseline and on day 3. Epo reduced neural response to negative vs. positive pictures 3 days post-administration in a network of areas including the hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal and parietal cortex. After the scan, Epo-treated patients showed improved memory compared with those that were given placebo. The effects occurred in the absence of changes in mood or haematological parameters, suggesting that they originated from direct neurobiological actions of Epo. These findings are similar to the effects of conventional antidepressants and opposite to the negative biases in depression. The central effects of Epo therefore deserve further investigation as a potential antidepressant mechanism.

Investigating vulnerability to eating disorders: biases in emotional processing

Biases in emotional processing and cognitions about the self are thought to play a role in the maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). However, little is known about whether these difficulties exist pre-morbidly and how they might contribute to risk. Female dieters (n=82) completed a battery of tasks designed to assess the processing of social cues (facial emotion recognition), cognitions about the self [Self-Schema Processing Task (SSPT)] and ED-specific cognitions about eating, weight and shape (emotional Stroop). The 26-item Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Garner et al. 1982) was used to assess subclinical ED symptoms; this was used as an index of vulnerability within this at-risk group. Regression analyses showed that biases in the processing of both neutral and angry faces were predictive of our measure of vulnerability (EAT-26). In the self-schema task, biases in the processing of negative self descriptors previously found to be common in EDs predicted vulnerability. Biases in the processing of shape-related words on the Stroop task were also predictive; however, these biases were more important in dieters who also displayed biases in the self-schema task. We were also able to demonstrate that these biases are specific and separable from more general negative biases that could be attributed to depressive symptoms. These results suggest that specific biases in the processing of social cues, cognitions about the self, and also about eating, weight and shape information, may be important in understanding risk and preventing relapse in EDs.

The Impact of Experiential Avoidance on the Inference of Characters' Emotions: Evidence for an Emotional Processing Bias.

Experiential avoidance is a functional class of maladaptive strategies that contribute to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Although previous research has demonstrated group differences in the interpretation of aversive stimuli, there is limited work on the influence of experiential avoidance during the online processing of emotion. An experimental design investigated the influence of self-reported experiential avoidance during emotion processing by assessing emotion inferences during the comprehension of narratives that imply different emotions. Results suggest that experiential avoidance is partially characterized by an emotional information processing bias. Specifically, individuals reporting higher experiential avoidance scores exhibited a bias towards activating negative emotion inferences, whereas individuals reporting lower experiential avoidance scores exhibited a bias towards activating positive emotion inferences. Minimal emotional inference was observed for the non-bias affective valence. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of experiential avoidance as a cognitive vulnerability for psychopathology.

Blocking Cholinergic Muscarinic Receptors Alters Emotional Processing Biases in Visual Processing Areas during Selective Visual Attention: an fMRI Study

Blocking Cholinergic Muscarinic Receptors Alters Emotional Processing Biases in Visual Processing Areas during Selective Visual Attention: an fMRI Study

Electrophysiological indicators of emotion processing biases in depressed undergraduates

It has been proposed that depressed individuals are biased towards and have more difficulty disengaging from negative information once it has been made salient (e.g. Joormann, J., 2004. Attentional bias in dysphoria: the role of inhibitory processes. Cognition & Emotion 18 (1), 125–147). The current study examined whether attention- and inhibition-related brain potentials were sensitive to both of these phenomena in depression using an affective go/no-go paradigm. Eighteen undergraduates who scored high on the Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD; Zimmerman, M., Coryell, W., 1987. The inventory to diagnose depression (IDD): a self-report scale to diagnose major depressive disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55 (1), 55–59) and 19 who scored low on the IDD completed the experiment. Results indicated that across all trials, subjects high on depressive symptomatology exhibited larger P3s in response to negative compared to positive stimuli. Examination of ERPs on trials uncontaminated by task-switching effects revealed larger N2s on “no-go” than “go” trials, and, specific to the depressive group, larger N2s in response to positive compared to negative stimuli. These data provide electrophysiological evidence that depressive subjects differentially categorize positive and negative emotional pictures. The P3 valence effect may help to explain difficulties inhibiting negative information seen in depression.

Early effects of mirtazapine on emotional processing

Acute administration of selective serotonin and noradrenaline re-uptake blockers to healthy volunteers affects the processing of emotional information but it is not known if similar effects occur with antidepressants acting through other pharmacological mechanisms. Mirtazapine is a clinically established antidepressant with complex actions involving blockade of noradrenaline alpha(2)-adrenoceptors as well as a number of 5-HT receptor subtypes. The aim of the present study was to test whether, like monoamine re-uptake inhibitors, mirtazapine would also produce positive biases in emotional processing. We studied 30 healthy volunteers who received either a single dose of mirtazapine (15 mg) or placebo in a parallel group, double-blind study. Two hours following medication administration, participants completed a battery of tasks testing various aspects of emotional processing including facial expression recognition, emotion potentiated startle, and emotional categorization and memory. Compared to placebo, mirtazapine significantly impaired the recognition of fearful facial expressions and reduced eye-blink responses in the emotion potentiated startle task. Participants receiving mirtazapine were also significantly quicker to respond to emotional self-relevant information in the categorization task and showed a positive bias in memory recall compared to those receiving placebo. Our findings indicate that mirtazapine reduces fear processing in healthy volunteers, an effect similar to that produced by repeated administration of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. In addition, mirtazapine increased memory for likeable versus dislikeable self-relevant information suggesting an induction of positive bias in emotional memory. Such effects may be important for our understanding of the neuropsychological mechanisms of antidepressant action in both anxiety and depressive disorders.

Augmenting serotonin neurotransmission with citalopram modulates emotional expression decoding but not structural encoding of moderate intensity sad facial emotional stimuli: an event-related potential (ERP) investigation

Antidepressants targeting the serotonergic system have been shown to modulate biases in emotional processing. The effects of serotonergic modulation on the temporal course of emotional processing (accruing within milliseconds) are unknown. Furthermore, it is unknown how serotonin affects different stages of facial emotional processing. The current study investigated the effects of acute serotonin augmentation on event-related potential (ERP) measures associated with 'structural encoding' (N170) and emotion 'expression decoding' (N250 and a late slow-wave positive potential [LPP]) of happy and sad facial stimuli, relative to neutral facial stimuli. The study was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design, in which 14 healthy male participants completed a facial recognition task under two acute treatment conditions: 1) placebo (PLB) and 2) 20 mg citalopram (CIT). ERP recording were conducted while subjects viewed neutral, happy and sad facial stimuli. Findings indicated that under PLB, the N170 was not modulated by valence (happy or sad versus neutral), but the N250 and LPP were enhanced for processing happy (relative to neutral) faces. Citalopram had no effect on the N170, but it enhanced the LPP for processing sad (relative to neutral) faces. These findings suggest that serotonin enhancement has selective and temporal effects on emotional face processing, with evidence for modulating processes associated with 'expression decoding' but not 'structural encoding'. The enhanced cortical response to perception of moderately intense sad facial expressions following citalopram administration may relate to the cognitive processing of the social relevance or significance of such ambiguous stimuli.

Evidence for modulation of facial emotional processing bias during emotional expression decoding by serotonergic and noradrenergic antidepressants: an event-related potential (ERP) study

Serotonergic (SSRI) and noradrenergic (NRI) antidepressants modulate biases in emotional processing such that perceptual bias is shifted away from negative and towards positive emotional material. However, the effects of serotonergic and noradrenergic modulation on the temporal course (occurring in milliseconds) of emotional processing, and in particular, the rapid physiological changes associated with the different stages of emotional processing, are unknown. The current study assessed the effects of acute serotonergic (i.e. with citalopram) and noradrenergic (i.e. with reboxetine) augmentation on event-related potential (ERP) measures associated with 'structural encoding' (N170) and emotion expression decoding (N250 and late positive potential [LPP]) for positive (happy) and negative (sad) facial stimuli relative to neutral facial stimuli. This study employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design in which 12 healthy male participants completed a facial expression recognition task tested under three acute conditions: (a) placebo, (b) citalopram (20 mg) and (c) reboxetine (4 mg). Both citalopram and reboxetine had no effect on the N170 ERP component associated with structural encoding, but potentiated the N250 associated with happy (relative to neutral) emotional facial expression decoding. Both drugs had no valence effects on later ERP measures of emotion expression decoding (LPP). Citalopram and reboxetine have selective effects on the temporal course of emotional processing with evidence to suggest specific effects on emotion expression decoding of positive (happy) emotional facial stimuli as evidenced by changes in the attention-modulated N250 but not structural encoding. These findings provide physiological evidence that antidepressants may shift perceptual biases in emotional processing away from negative and towards positive stimuli.

Visual processing of emotional expressions in mixed anxious-depressed subclinical state: An event-related potential study on a female sample

Controversy remains about the existence and the nature of a specific bias in emotional facial expression processing in mixed anxious-depressed state (MAD). Event-related potentials were recorded in the following three types of groups defined by the Spielberger state and trait anxiety inventory (STAI) and the Beck depression inventory (BDI): a group of anxious participants (n=12), a group of participants with depressive and anxious tendencies (n=12), and a control group (n=12). Participants were confronted with a visual oddball task in which they had to detect, as quickly as possible, deviant faces amongst a train of standard neutral faces. Deviant stimuli changed either on identity, or on emotion (happy or sad expression). Anxiety facilitated emotional processing and the two anxious groups produced quicker responses than control participants; these effects were correlated with an earlier decisional wave (P3b) for anxious participants. Mixed anxious-depressed participants showed enhanced visual processing of deviant stimuli and produced higher amplitude in attentional complex (N2b/P3a), both for identity and emotional trials. P3a was also particularly increased for emotional faces in this group. Anxious state mainly influenced later decision processes (shorter latency of P3b), whereas mixed anxious-depressed state acted on earlier steps of emotional processing (enhanced N2b/P3a complex). Mixed anxious-depressed individuals seemed more reactive to any visual change, particularly emotional change, without displaying any valence bias.

Risk for depression is associated with neural biases in emotional categorisation

Negative biases in emotional processing are a major characteristic of depression. Recent research has shown that such negative biases are evident in high risk individuals even in the absence of personal history of depression, suggesting that they may serve as key vulnerability markers of depression. However, the neural basis of these behavioural observations has not been fully explored. This study therefore aimed to (1) illustrate the neural processes involved in the categorisation of emotional personality-trait words; and (2) examine whether these neural mechanisms are biased towards negative information in high risk individuals. Risk for depression was defined by high neuroticism (N). We recruited a sample of high risk (high N) and low risk (low N) never-depressed young adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was acquired during the categorisation and memory for positive and negative self-referent personality-trait words (e.g. honest, rude). High risk volunteers showed greater responses in the right superior parietal cortex than low risk volunteers specifically during the categorisation of negative words. Moreover, neuroticism score was positively correlated with neural responses in the left anterior cingulate during the categorisation of negative words but negatively correlated within the same region during the retrieval of these words. These results highlight a role of the fronto-parietal circuitry in emotional processing and further suggest that negative biases in these neural processes may be involved in risk for depression.

Avoiding Interference: Adult Attachment and Emotional Processing Biases

The present study investigated attachment-related differences in emotional processing biases. Consistent with the proposal that avoidant individuals limit attention to potentially distressing information, attachment avoidance was associated with reductions in emotional Stroop (ES) interference for attachment-related words (e.g., intimate, loss). These biases were strongest among individuals who were currently in a romantic relationship, suggesting that being in a close relationship may activate avoidant defensive strategies. In addition, avoidant attentional biases were attenuated under cognitive load, suggesting that inhibiting attention to attachment-related information requires cognitive effort. Finally, avoidance was unrelated to ES performance for emotional, nonattachment-related words, demonstrating the specificity of these attentional biases. The present findings suggest that avoidant individuals can inhibit attention to potentially threatening information, that this ability requires cognitive effort, and that relationship status may be an important moderator of avoidant defensive strategies. The implications of these strategies for emotional functioning and well-being are discussed.

A single dose of citalopram increases fear recognition in healthy subjects

We have previously shown that a single dose of intravenous citalopram in healthy volunteers enhances the detection of fearful facial expressions, suggesting an effect of acute selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatment on the processing of anxiety-related stimuli. The aim of the present study was to confirm and extend this finding by studying the effects of a single dose of oral citalopram on a range of tasks designed to assess different aspects of emotional processing. A total of 32 healthy volunteers were randomly allocated to double-blind treatment with either citalopram 20 mg orally or placebo. Participants then completed a series of tasks assessing emotional aspects of attention (visual-probe task), perception (categorization of facial affect), memory (emotional memory task) and reactivity to threat (emotion potentiated startle). Relative to placebo-treated subjects, participants treated with citalopram demonstrated improved recognition of fearful faces and increased baseline startle response. However, the citalopram group also showed an attentional bias towards positive words. Our data suggest that acute oral citalopram increases the processing of anxiety-related stimuli in healthy volunteers. This mechanism could underlie the known tendency of SSRIs to increase anxiety in patients early in treatment. Our data also suggests that some of the positive biases in emotional processing produced by SSRI treatment might be detectable at the beginning of treatment.

Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von emotionalen Gesichtsausdrücken bei weiblichen Jugendlichen mit einer Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörung

Investigation of the perception of emotional and neutral facial expressions in female adolescents with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Emotional and neutral facial expressions from the set of Ekman and Friesen were presented to 30 adolescent patients with a diagnosis of BPD, to 29 adolescent patients with other psychiatric diagnoses, and to a control group of 30 healthy subjects. All participants in the study were female. The subjects were asked to name the displayed emotion and to estimate the perceived intensity, negativity and pleasantness by means of a self-developed questionnaire on the perception of emotions in facial expressions. Female adolescents with BPD demonstrated no deficits in naming the displayed emotions. Nor did they differ from the clinical and healthy control groups regarding the subjective ratings of the negative and neutral facial expressions. However, female adolescents with BPD rated the pleasantness and intensity of positive facial expressions lower, and the negativity of positive facial expressions higher than did either the clinical or the healthy control group. The findings suggest the need for further research on the processing of positive stimuli and its role in the regulation of emotion in adolescents with borderline personality disorder. Due to the dysfunctional interpretation of positive emotional stimuli, therapeutic efforts should also rely on the possible biases in emotional information processing.

Perceptual asymmetry and youths’ responses to stress: Understanding vulnerability to depression

This research examined the hypothesis that reduced posterior right hemisphere activity interferes with the regulation of emotions and behaviour in response to stress, creating vulnerability to depression. Consistent with a diathesis–stress model, we predicted that youths with a reduced posterior right hemisphere bias in emotional processing would engage in less adaptive responses to stress, which would be associated with depressive symptoms in those who reported the recent experience of high, but not low, levels of stress. Participants were 510 4th through 8th graders who completed the Chimeric Faces Task and measures of responses to stress and depressive symptoms. Results supported the idea that responses to stress account for the association between reduced posterior right hemisphere activity and depressive symptoms in youths who report high, but not low, levels of stress. This study provides insight into one process through which reduced posterior right hemisphere activity may confer vulnerability to depressive symptoms, and implicates responses to stress as a target for intervention.

Impaired emotional categorisation in young people at increased familial risk of depression

Negative biases in emotional information processing are characteristic of patients with acute depression and may persist after clinical recovery. It is not clear, however, whether such biases are present before the onset of the depressive disorder. The aim of the present study was to examine whether young people at risk of depression, by virtue of having a depressed biological parent (FH+), demonstrate negative biases in tasks of emotional facial recognition and emotional categorization. We also assessed whether task performance and the influence of parental depression are modified by allelic variation in the serotonin transporter (5HTT) gene. We found that the FH+ participants did not show evidence of negative biases relative to matched controls. They were, however, significantly slower to perform a task of emotional categorization. 5HTT genotype did not influence emotional processing significantly. We conclude that negative biases in emotional processing do not appear to be present in people with a family history of depression. However, impairment in emotional categorization could identify a high-risk phenotype and may indicate that people at genetic risk of depression have difficulty in using “mood as information”.

Biased Recognition of Happy Facial Expressions in Social Anxiety

Recognizing emotional expressions is central to understanding the feelings and intentions of other people. Little is known about how social anxiety affects the recognition of emotional expressions. Recent research finds a recognition advantage for happy expressions over negative expressions. In two experiments, social anxiety moderated the recognition advantage of happy faces. People low and high in social anxiety recognized sad faces (Experiment 1) and angry faces (Experiment 2) equally quickly, but people high in social anxiety took longer to recognize happy faces. Both groups showed a significant recognition advantage for happy faces, although the advantage was at least twice as large in the low social–anxiety group. The discussion focuses on mechanisms connecting social anxiety to face processing and on the role of expression recognition in other emotional–processing biases.