Inhibition of emotional faces in clinical and subclinical depression

Nathan Ridout, Barbara Dritschel, Hannah Wardall, Richard Day, Ronan O' Carroll

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Impaired inhibition of emotional material is an important cognitive component of depression. The current aim was to determine if participants with major depression (MDD) and/or subclinical depression (dysphoria) exhibit impaired inhibition of sad faces on a face-word variant of the Stroop task. Study 1: patients with MDD (n=28) and healthy controls (n=32) were presented with positive and negative words superimposed across happy, sad, and neutral faces. Study 2: dysphoric (n=23) and non-dysphoric (n=35) participants were presented with positive and negative words superimposed across happy and sad faces (shown upright and inverted). Participants were told to ignore the faces and categorise the words. Patients with MDD experienced greater interference from sad faces than did the controls. Healthy controls experienced greater interference from happy than sad faces, whereas interference levels from happy and sad faces did not differ in patients with MDD. Dysphoric participants experienced greater interference from sad faces than did non-dysphoric participants, and from sad faces than happy. The amount of interference from happy and sad faces did not differ in the non-dysphoric participants. Clinical and subclinical depression are linked to impaired inhibition of sad faces, which might represent a risk factor for depression and a potential target for intervention.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)221-234
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Psychiatric Research
Volume182
Early online date10 Jan 2025
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2025

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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