RECOGNITION OF FACIAL EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIO N BY DEPRESSED-PATIENTS - CLINICAL AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY

The recognition of facial emotional expression in depressed patients w ith major depressive disorder (MDD) and slow progressive schizophrenia (SPS) in acute state and in remission was studied in comparison with healthy persons. All the subjects were right-banded. The drawings of s ad, neutral and happy faces followed by masking stimulus were displaye d in the center field and in the left or right hemifield of vision on the computer screen for 80 ms. All the depressed patients revealed mar ked impairment of facial emotion recognition, especially for negative on, and disturbances of hemisphere asymmetry. There were some differen ces between MDD and SPS patients. The MDD patients showed more signifi cant Impairment of emotion recognition and right hemisphere disfunctio n. The SPS patients were less impaired and revealed mild worsening in the left hemisphere only. In remission MDD patients showed a significa nt improvement of emotion recognition contrary to SPS patients who fai led to recover this function. The revealed emotion recognition disturb ances in MDD patients are supposed to be dynamic, whereas in depressed patients with SPS it is considered to he a trait feature.