Dynamic virtual faces demonstrate deterioration in the recognition of facial emotion in bipolar disorder patients

Bipolar disorder (BD) impacts around 1-2.4% of the world's citizens, causing significant declines in life quality and psychosocial functioning for many individuals. The primary objective of our research was to assess facial emotion recognition by employing a unique collection of dynamic virtual faces (DVFs). Data from one-hundred and ten participants were analysed, consisting of fifty-five BD patients and an equally large number of healthy matched controls. Each participant completed a single session comprising sociodemographic and clinical assessments, as well as a task for the recognition of emotions. The task involved virtual non-immersive reality, where participants viewed DVFs displaying the neutral expression and the six basic emotions on a 27" computer screen. After each DVF presentation, enrollees had to identify the underlying emotion by choosing from seven possible responses that were displayed at the bottom of the screen. Patients with BD demonstrated impaired facial emotion recognition skills, exhibiting lower accuracy rates and longer reaction times compared to their healthy counterparts. The most substantial differences were observed in recognising fear, disgust and sadness. Interestingly, individuals with BD exhibited better recognition of positive emotions than negative ones. Notably, factors such as psychopathology (including bipolar symptomology and affectivity), level of functioning and life quality did not show significant correlations with emotion recognition in BD patients. The recognition of the most dynamic faces was superior in healthy controls, and the presentation angle had no discernible impact on either group. This study confirmed that people with BD have trouble recognising affect across the entire spectrum. While our validation of the DVFs tool was successful, it is worth noting that research employing virtual reality in this domain remains relatively scarce. Therefore, further investigations using virtual reality tools are encouraged to enhance the methodological consistency of studies and yield more conclusive findings.