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Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, i...

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Autores principales: Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria, Czepluch, Felix, Kersting, Anette, Suslow, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879523/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33573637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03093-6
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author Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria
Czepluch, Felix
Kersting, Anette
Suslow, Thomas
author_facet Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria
Czepluch, Felix
Kersting, Anette
Suslow, Thomas
author_sort Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, in general, to find evidence for increased spatial attention toward negative facial expressions and reduced spatial attention toward positive facial expressions in depressed individuals. Eye-tracking analyses allow for a more detailed examination of visual search processes over time during the perception of multiple stimuli and can provide more specific insights into the attentional processing of multiple emotional stimuli. METHODS: Gaze behavior of 38 clinically depressed individuals and 38 gender matched healthy controls was compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Pictures of happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions were utilized as target and distractor stimuli. Four distinct measures of eye gaze served as dependent variables: (a) latency to the target face, (b) number of distractor faces fixated prior to fixating the target, (c) mean fixation time per distractor face before fixating the target and (d) mean fixation time on the target. RESULTS: Depressed and healthy individuals did not differ in their manual response times. Our eye-tracking data revealed no differences between study groups in attention guidance to emotional target faces as well as in the duration of attention allocation to emotional distractor and target faces. However, depressed individuals fixated fewer distractor faces before fixating the target than controls, regardless of valence of expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Depressed individuals seem to process angry and happy expressions in crowds of faces mainly in the same way as healthy individuals. Our data indicate no biased attention guidance to emotional targets and no biased processing of angry and happy distractors and targets in depression during visual search. Under conditions of clear task demand depressed individuals seem to be able to allocate and guide their attention in crowds of angry and happy faces as efficiently as healthy individuals. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-021-03093-6.
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spelling pubmed-78795232021-02-17 Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria Czepluch, Felix Kersting, Anette Suslow, Thomas BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, in general, to find evidence for increased spatial attention toward negative facial expressions and reduced spatial attention toward positive facial expressions in depressed individuals. Eye-tracking analyses allow for a more detailed examination of visual search processes over time during the perception of multiple stimuli and can provide more specific insights into the attentional processing of multiple emotional stimuli. METHODS: Gaze behavior of 38 clinically depressed individuals and 38 gender matched healthy controls was compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Pictures of happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions were utilized as target and distractor stimuli. Four distinct measures of eye gaze served as dependent variables: (a) latency to the target face, (b) number of distractor faces fixated prior to fixating the target, (c) mean fixation time per distractor face before fixating the target and (d) mean fixation time on the target. RESULTS: Depressed and healthy individuals did not differ in their manual response times. Our eye-tracking data revealed no differences between study groups in attention guidance to emotional target faces as well as in the duration of attention allocation to emotional distractor and target faces. However, depressed individuals fixated fewer distractor faces before fixating the target than controls, regardless of valence of expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Depressed individuals seem to process angry and happy expressions in crowds of faces mainly in the same way as healthy individuals. Our data indicate no biased attention guidance to emotional targets and no biased processing of angry and happy distractors and targets in depression during visual search. Under conditions of clear task demand depressed individuals seem to be able to allocate and guide their attention in crowds of angry and happy faces as efficiently as healthy individuals. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-021-03093-6. BioMed Central 2021-02-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7879523/ /pubmed/33573637 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03093-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bodenschatz, Charlott Maria
Czepluch, Felix
Kersting, Anette
Suslow, Thomas
Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title_full Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title_fullStr Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title_full_unstemmed Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title_short Efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
title_sort efficient visual search for facial emotions in patients with major depression
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879523/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33573637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03093-6
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