ABNORMAL RECOGNITION OF FACIAL EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS IN DEPRESSED-PATIENTS WITH MAJOR DEPRESSION DISORDER AND SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY-DISORDER

The aim of this paper is to study the recognition of facial expression of emotions in depressed patients with major depressive disorder (MD) and schizotypal personality disorder (STP), The pictures of sad, emot ionally neutral, and happy faces followed by a masking stimulus were d isplayed for 80 msec on a computer screen randomly in the left or righ t hemifield of vision (LHF and RHF). The subjects had to respond by pr essing a three position key. Multiple analysis of variance revealed th at all depressed patients, relative to control subjects, made more err ors in a task of recognition of facial affect, The characteristics of impairment of performance were found to be related to the nosology of depression, MD patients revealed significantly impaired recognition of negative (in LHF and in RHF) and positive (in LHF) facial emotions, a s well as poorer recognition in the right hemisphere, and reduced hemi spheric asymmetry. In remission, they showed statistically significant recovery of recognition function. STP patients were less impaired and showed slightly poorer recognition of sad (in RHF) and happy (in LHF) expressions. This group demonstrated significantly poor recognition o f happy expressions, and more marked dysfunction of the left hemispher e, In remission STP patients failed to improve in recognition of emoti on. This suggests, that the features of emotion recognition in MD and STP groups reflect some differences in the neurophysiological mechanis ms underlying the affect-related dysfunction in these groups of depres sed patients.