Emotional context effect on recognition of varying facial emotion expression intensities in depression

Background Previous research has indicated that Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) patients have deficits in the process of facial emotion recognition. In most of these studies, isolated emotional faces were used, and the effect of the surrounding context of the face was neglected. We aimed to investigate how context emotion (sad or happy) affects facial emotion recognition and whether this effect is different in depressive individuals compared to the control group. Methods Happy, sad, neutral facial expressions with congruent and incongruent visual contexts were presented to 51 MDD patients and 42 matched healthy controls. Emotional facial expressions are presented as morphs gradually expressing happiness or sadness with 40% and 80% intensity levels. Mean reaction time, mean accuracy rate, and mean emotion intensity rating score was calculated for each condition. Results The performances on facial emotion intensity rating and accuracy rate were similar between MDD patients and controls. MDD patients were slower to recognize all facial emotions and to recognize facial emotions with emotionally incongruent backgrounds compared to congruent ones. Limitations Antidepressant therapy of patients might have affected our results. Conclusions Emotional contextual features have an important role in facial emotion recognition but this effect is independent of depression. Longer reaction time in depression may be related to some cognitive impairments.