Facial perception bias in patients with major depression

This study used a morphed categorical perception facial expression task to evaluate whether patients with depression demonstrated deficits in distinguishing boundaries between emotions. Forty-one patients with depression and 41 healthy controls took part in this study. They were administered a standardized set of morphed photographs of facial expressions with varying emotional intensities between 0% and 100% of the emotion, in 10% increments to provide a range of intensities from pleasant to unpleasant(e.g. happy to sad, happy to angry) and approach-avoidance (e.g. angry to fearful). Compared with healthy controls, the patients with depression demonstrated a rapid perception of sad expressions in happy-sad emotional continuum and demonstrated a rapid perception of angry expressions in angry-fearful emotional continuum. In addition, when facial expressions shifted from happy to angry, the depressed patients had a clear demarcation for the happy-angry continuum. Depressed patients had a perceptual bias towards unpleasant versus pleasant expressions and the hypersensitivity to angry facial signals might influence the interaction behaviors between depressed patients and others.     

An analysis of categorical perception of facial emotion in schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: Emotion perception deficits have been extensively documented in schizophrenia and are associated with poor social functioning. Yet fundamental questions about the nature and scope of these impairments remain unanswered from commonly used experimental tasks. An alternative categorical perception paradigm that focuses on distinguishing boundaries between emotions was used to evaluate whether schizophrenia patients demonstrate atypical patterns of categorical perception and a negativity bias in the identification of ambiguous facial expressions. METHOD: 47 schizophrenia outpatients and 31 nonpsychiatric controls completed a forced-choice emotion identification task. Stimuli consisted of a series of digitized facial images that were morphed in 10% signal intensity increments along continua between pairs of emotions (happy-sad; fearful-happy; angry-fearful; angry-sad) and presented in a random order. For each emotion continuum, measures of the response slope and the location of the boundary shift point between emotions were calculated for each group. RESULTS: The schizophrenia group demonstrated significantly shallower response curves than controls across all emotion continua. Despite these generally less precise demarcations between emotions, patients did not significantly differ from controls in the location of the shift point between emotions on any of the continua. CONCLUSIONS: Schizophrenia patients demonstrated impaired categorical perception of facial expressions with generally less sharp categorizations of ambiguous stimuli to one emotion category or another. However, patients did not demonstrate a negativity bias in their processing of ambiguous facial expressions. The emotional continuum paradigm can help to clarify the nature and boundaries of affect perception deficits in schizophrenia.     

Emotional face processing deficit in schizophrenia: A replication study in a South African Xhosa population

Schizophrenia is associated with a deficit in the recognition of negative emotions from facial expressions. The present study examined the universality of this finding by studying facial expression recognition in African Xhosa population. Forty-four Xhosa patients with schizophrenia and forty healthy controls were tested with a computerized task requiring rapid perceptual discrimination of matched positive (i.e. happy), negative (i.e. angry), and neutral faces. Patients were equally accurate as controls in recognizing happy faces but showed a marked impairment in recognition of angry faces. The impairment was particularly pronounced for high-intensity (open-mouth) angry faces. Patients also exhibited more false happy and angry responses to neutral faces than controls. No correlation between level of education or illness duration and emotion recognition was found but the deficit in the recognition of negative emotions was more pronounced in familial compared to non-familial cases of schizophrenia. These findings suggest that the deficit in the recognition of negative facial expressions may constitute a universal neurocognitive marker of schizophrenia.     

Facial emotion perception differs in young persons at genetic and clinical high-risk for psychosis

A large body of literature has documented facial emotion perception impairments in schizophrenia. More recently, emotion perception has been investigated in persons at genetic and clinical high-risk for psychosis. This study compared emotion perception abilities in groups of young persons with schizophrenia, clinical high-risk, genetic risk and healthy controls. Groups, ages 13–25, included 24 persons at clinical high-risk, 52 first-degree relatives at genetic risk, 91 persons with schizophrenia and 90 low risk persons who completed computerized testing of emotion recognition and differentiation. Groups differed by overall emotion recognition abilities and recognition of happy, sad, anger and fear expressions. Pairwise comparisons revealed comparable impairments in recognition of happy, angry, and fearful expressions for persons at clinical high-risk and schizophrenia, while genetic risk participants were less impaired, showing reduced recognition of fearful expressions. Groups also differed for differentiation of happy and sad expressions, but differences were mainly between schizophrenia and control groups. Emotion perception impairments are observable in young persons at-risk for psychosis. Preliminary results with clinical high-risk participants, when considered along findings in genetic risk relatives, suggest social cognition abilities to reflect pathophysiological processes involved in risk of schizophrenia.     

Morphed emotional faces: Emotion detection and misinterpretation in social anxiety

The current study investigated detection and interpretation of emotional facial expressions in high socially anxious (HSA) individuals compared to non-anxious controls (NAC). A version of the morphed faces task was implemented to assess emotion onset perception, decoding accuracy and interpretation, either with time pressure (Restricted Viewing Task, RVT) or with unlimited viewing (Free Viewing Task, FVT). Twenty-seven HSA and 30 NAC viewed sequences of neutral faces slowly changing to full-intensity angry, happy, or disgust expressions. Participants were instructed to assign the expression as soon as possible to one of four given emotion categories (angry, contempt, disgust, or happy). While no group differences were found for emotion onset perception or decoding performance, the results suggest an interpretation bias in HSA. Under the RVT condition, HSA demonstrated a threat bias (disgust interpreted as contempt), contrasting the NAC’s positive bias (disgust interpreted as happy). No group differences were found in the FVT. We suggest that socially anxious individuals tend to misinterpret facial expressions as threatening when they must do so quickly and efficiently, as in real life.     

Positive and negative affect differentially influence identification of facial emotions

Positive and negative affects may bias behavior toward approach to rewards and withdrawal from threat, particularly when the contingencies are ambiguous. The hypothesis was that positive and negative affects would associate predictably with identification of happy, disgusted, or angry expressions that may signal potentially rewarding or aversive social interactions. Healthy volunteers (n=86) completed affect ratings and a facial emotion task that employed morphed continua in which emotional expressions gradually decreased in ambiguity. Relations between mood and intensity thresholds for emotion identification were computed. Anhedonia (low positive affect) predicted thresholds for happy expressions (r=0.24; P=.026) whereas negative affect predicted thresholds for disgust (r=-0.25; P=.022). Even within a normal range of mood, mood predicted emotion identification, supporting constructs of positive and negative affect derived originally from self-report measures.     

Seeing happy emotion in fearful and angry faces: qualitative analysis of facial expression recognition in a bilateral amygdala-damaged patient

Neuropsychological studies reported that bilateral amygdala-damaged patients had impaired recognition of facial expressions of fear. However, the specificity of this impairment remains unclear. To address this issue, we carried out two experiments concerning the recognition of facial expression in a patient with bilateral amygdala damage (HY). In Experiment 1, subjects matched the emotion of facial expressions with appropriate verbal labels, using standardized photographs of facial expressions illustrating six basic emotions. The performance of HY was compared with age-matched normal controls (n = 13) and brain-damaged controls (n = 9). HY was less able to recognize facial expressions showing fear than normal controls. In addition, the error pattern exhibited by HY for facial expressions of fear and anger were distinct from those exhibited by both control groups, and suggested that HY confused these emotions with happiness. In Experiment 2, subjects were presented with morphed facial expressions that blended happiness and fear, happiness and anger, or happiness and sadness. Subjects were requested to categorize these expressions by two-way forced-choice selection. The performance of HY was compared with age-matched normal controls (n = 8). HY categorized the morphed fearful and angry expressions blended with some happy content as happy facial expressions more frequently than normal controls. These findings support the idea that amygdala-damaged patients have impaired processing of facial expressions relating to certain negative emotions, particularly fear and anger. More specifically, amygdala-damaged patients seem to give positively biased evaluations for these negative facial expressions.     

Is facial emotion recognition impairment in schizophrenia identical for different emotions? A signal detection analysis

Patients with schizophrenia have difficulty recognising the emotion that corresponds to a given facial expression. According to signal detection theory, two separate processes are involved in facial emotion perception: a sensory process (measured by sensitivity which is the ability to distinguish one facial emotion from another facial emotion) and a cognitive decision process (measured by response criterion which is the tendency to judge a facial emotion as a particular emotion). It is uncertain whether facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia are primarily due to impaired sensitivity or response bias. In this study, we hypothesised that individuals with schizophrenia would have both diminished sensitivity and different response criteria in facial emotion recognition across different emotions compared with healthy controls. Twenty-five individuals with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia were compared with age and IQ matched healthy controls. Participants performed a "yes-no" task by indicating whether the 88 Ekman faces shown briefly expressed one of the target emotions in three randomly ordered runs (happy, sad and fear). Sensitivity and response criteria for facial emotion recognition was calculated as d-prime and In(beta) respectively using signal detection theory. Patients with schizophrenia showed diminished sensitivity (d-prime) in recognising happy faces, but not faces that expressed fear or sadness. By contrast, patients exhibited a significantly less strict response criteria (In(beta)) in recognising fearful and sad faces. Our results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have a specific deficit in recognising happy faces, whereas they were more inclined to attribute any facial emotion as fearful or sad.     

Are there differential deficits in facial emotion recognition between paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia? A signal detection analysis

This study assessed facial emotion recognition abilities in subjects with paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia (NPS) using signal detection theory. We explore the differential deficits in facial emotion recognition in 44 paranoid patients with schizophrenia (PS) and 30 non-paranoid patients with schizophrenia (NPS), compared to 80 healthy controls. We used morphed faces with different intensities of emotion and computed the sensitivity index (d′) of each emotion. The results showed that performance differed between the schizophrenia and healthy controls groups in the recognition of both negative and positive affects. The PS group performed worse than the healthy controls group but better than the NPS group in overall performance. Performance differed between the NPS and healthy controls groups in the recognition of all basic emotions and neutral faces; between the PS and healthy controls groups in the recognition of angry faces; and between the PS and NPS groups in the recognition of happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, and neutral affects. The facial emotion recognition impairment in schizophrenia may reflect a generalized deficit rather than a negative-emotion specific deficit. The PS group performed worse than the control group, but better than the NPS group in facial expression recognition, with differential deficits between PS and NPS patients.     

Segregating intra-amygdalar responses to dynamic facial emotion with cytoarchitectonic maximum probability maps

Multiple lines of evidence converge on the human amygdala as a core moderator of facial emotion perception. The major subregions of the human amygdala have been anatomically delineated, but the individual contribution of these subregions to facial emotion perception is unclear. Here we combined functional MRI (fMRI) with cytoarchitectonically defined maximum probabilistic maps to investigate the response characteristics of amygdala subregions in 14 subjects presented with dynamic animations of angry and happy relative to neutral facial expressions. We localized facial emotion-related signal changes in the basolateral and superficial (cortical) subregions of the left amygdala, with most robust responses observed to happy faces. Moreover, we demonstrate a differential neural response to happy faces in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is consistent with a hypothesized role of this brain region in positive valence processing. Furthermore, angry and happy faces both evoked temporopolar responses. Our findings extend current models of facial emotion perception in humans by suggesting an intrinsic functional differentiation within the amygdala related to the extraction of value from facial expressions.     

The misclassification of facial expressions in generalised social phobia

The aim of this study was to investigate facial expression recognition (FER) accuracy in social phobia and in particular to explore how facial expressions of emotion were misclassified. We hypothesised that compared with healthy controls, subjects with social phobia would be no less accurate in their identification of facial emotions (as reported in previous studies) but that they would misclassify facial expressions as expressing threatening emotions (anger, fear or disgust). Thirty individuals with social phobia and twenty-seven healthy controls completed a FER task which featured six basic emotions morphed using computer techniques between 0 percent (neutral) and 100 percent intensity (full emotion). Supporting our hypotheses we found no differences between the groups on measures of the accuracy of emotion recognition but that compared with healthy controls the social phobia group were more likely both to misclassify facial expressions as angry and to interpret neutral facial expressions as angry. The healthy control group were more likely to misclassify neutral expressions as sad. The importance of the role of these biases in social phobia needs further replication but may help in understanding the disorder and provide an interesting area for future research and therapy.     

Facial emotion perception in Chinese patients with schizophrenia and non-psychotic first-degree relatives

Although there is a consensus that patients with schizophrenia have certain deficits in perceiving and expressing facial emotions, previous studies of facial emotion perception in schizophrenia do not present consistent results. The objective of this study was to explore facial emotion perception deficits in Chinese patients with schizophrenia and their non-psychotic first-degree relatives. Sixty-nine patients with schizophrenia, 56 of their first-degree relatives (33 parents and 23 siblings), and 92 healthy controls (67 younger healthy controls matched to the patients and siblings, and 25 older healthy controls matched to the parents) completed a set of facial emotion perception tasks, including facial emotion discrimination, identification, intensity, valence, and corresponding face identification tasks. The results demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than their siblings and younger healthy controls in accuracy in a variety of facial emotion perception tasks, whereas the siblings of the patients performed as well as the corresponding younger healthy controls in all of the facial emotion perception tasks. Patients with schizophrenia also showed significantly reduced speed than younger healthy controls, while siblings of patients did not demonstrate significant differences with both patients and younger healthy controls in speed. Meanwhile, we also found that parents of the schizophrenia patients performed significantly worse than the corresponding older healthy controls in accuracy in terms of facial emotion identification, valence, and the composite index of the facial discrimination, identification, intensity and valence tasks. Moreover, no significant differences were found between the parents of patients and older healthy controls in speed after controlling the years of education and IQ. Taken together, the results suggest that facial emotion perception deficits may serve as potential endophenotypes for schizophrenia.     

Perceiving emotions from bodily expressions and multisensory integration of emotion cues in schizophrenia

Most studies investigating emotion recognition in schizophrenia have focused on facial expressions and neglected bodily and vocal expressions. Furthermore, little is known about affective multisensory integration in schizophrenia. In the first experiment, the authors investigated recognition of static, face-blurred, whole-body expressions (instrumental, angry, fearful, and sad) with a two-alternative, forced-choice, simultaneous matching task in a sample of schizophrenia patients, nonschizophrenic psychotic patients, and matched controls. In the second experiment, dynamic, face-blurred, whole-body expressions (fearful and happy) were presented simultaneously with either congruent or incongruent human or animal vocalizations to schizophrenia patients and controls. Participants were instructed to categorize the emotion expressed by the body and to ignore the auditory information. The results of Experiment 1 show an emotion recognition impairment in the schizophrenia group and to a lesser extent in the nonschizophrenic psychosis group, and this for all four expressions. The findings of Experiment 2 show that schizophrenia patients are more influenced by the auditory information than controls, but only when the auditory information consists of human vocalizations. This shows that schizophrenia patients are impaired in recognizing whole-body expressions, and they show abnormal affective multisensory integration of bimodal stimuli originating from the same source.     

Effects of diazepam on facial emotion recognition

OBJECTIVE: There have been few studies of the pharmacologic modulation of facial emotion recognition. The present study aimed to replicate and extend the finding that recognition of facial anger was selectively impaired by diazepam. The hypothesis was that, in comparison with placebo, diazepam would impair the recognition of facial anger in healthy volunteers, but not the recognition of 5 other basic emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness and disgust. DESIGN: A randomized, counterbalanced, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects comparison of diazepam with placebo. SETTING: A university psychopharmacology research unit. PARTICIPANTS: Healthy male (n = 6) and female (n = 22) volunteers, aged 18-45 years. PROCEDURES: Subjects were tested on 2 tasks following the administration of diazepam, 15 mg, and placebo on separate occasions. In the first "multimorph" task, images of facial expressions were morphed to produce continua between the neutral and full expressions of 6 basic emotions. Accuracy and identification thresholds were assessed for stimuli in which the intensity of expression gradually increased. In the second "emotional hexagon" task, facial expressions were morphed between pairs of emotions. Single images were presented, and accuracy and speed of response were assessed. RESULTS: Diazepam produced broad impairments in response accuracy, recognition thresholds and response speed on the facial emotion tasks that were not limited to angry expressions. CONCLUSIONS: The present study found that diazepam, 15 mg, impaired facial emotion recognition, but not selectively. In the emotional hexagon task, a reaction-time analysis suggested that the identification of facial anger might be differentially sensitive to variations in stimulus duration, complicating the interpretation of this paradigm.     

Sustained attention in the context of emotional processing in patients with schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia show dysfunction in sustained attention and facial emotion processing. We investigated the interplay between sustained attention and emotion by presenting emotional faces as background during AX-CPT in patients with schizophrenia. Nineteen schizophrenia patients and 21 healthy control subjects participated. We presented AX-CPT number stimuli superimposed on the nose of background facial expressions (happy, neutral or sad) over three experimental blocks for each emotion. Signal detection sensitivity (A') and reaction time were measured. Patients showed a steeper sensitivity decline when happy faces (compared with sad faces) were presented as background stimuli. By contrast, controls' sensitivity was not affected by the background facial emotion stimuli. Across the emotion conditions, the decline of sensitivity over time was evident in patients, but not in controls. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to explore a change in sustained attention accompanied by simultaneous processing of emotional faces in schizophrenia patients. Our findings suggest that mechanisms underlying continuous performance test (CPT) performance decline over time and facial emotion deficit may interact with each other in patients with schizophrenia.     

Impaired emotion perception in schizophrenia: a differential deficit

We investigated previously reported contradictory findings regarding the nature of deficits in emotion perception among patients with schizophrenia. Some studies have concluded that such deficits are due to a generalized impairment in visual processing of faces, while others have found it to be restricted to facial emotional expressions. We examined 37 patients and 32 healthy controls, matched on age and education, using three computerized tests: matching facial identity, matching facial emotional expressions, and discrimination of subtle differences in the valence of facial emotional expressions. Our results showed impaired matching of emotions in patients with schizophrenia. This impairment did not manifest on tasks that depended on perceiving the identity of faces or cues of the relative valence of facial emotional expressions. Our findings support the differential deficit hypothesis of emotion perception in schizophrenia.     

Enhanced neural activity in response to dynamic facial expressions of emotion: an fMRI study

Dynamic facial expressions of emotion constitute natural and powerful media of communication between individuals. However, little is known about the neural substrate underlying the processing of dynamic facial expressions of emotion. We depicted the brain areas by using fMRI with 22 right-handed healthy subjects. The facial expressions are dynamically morphed from neutral to fearful or happy expressions. Two types of control stimuli were presented: (i) static facial expressions, which provided sustained fearful or happy expressions, and (ii) dynamic mosaic images, which provided dynamic information with no facial features. Subjects passively viewed these stimuli. The left amygdala was highly activated in response to dynamic facial expressions relative to both control stimuli in the case of fearful expressions, but not in the case of happy expressions. The broad region of the occipital and temporal cortices, especially in the right hemisphere, which included the activation foci of the inferior occipital gyri, middle temporal gyri, and fusiform gyri, showed higher activation during viewing of the dynamic facial expressions than it did during the viewing of either control stimulus, common to both expressions. In the same manner, the right ventral premotor cortex was also activated. These results identify the neural substrate for enhanced emotional, perceptual/cognitive, and motor processing of dynamic facial expressions of emotion.     

Time course of facial emotion processing in women with borderline personality disorder: an ERP study

BackgroundBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by a negative perception of others. Previous studies have revealed deficits and biases in facial emotion recognition. This study investigates the behavioural and electrophysiological correlates underlying facial emotion processing in individuals with BPD.MethodsThe present study was conducted between July 2012 and May 2014. In an emotion classification task, unmedicated female patients with BPD as well as healthy women had to classify faces displaying blends of anger and happiness while the electroencephalogram was recorded. We analyzed visual event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting early (P100), structural (N170) and categorical (P300) facial processing in addition to behavioural responses.ResultsWe included 36 women with BPD and 29 controls in our analysis. Patients with BPD were more likely than controls to classify predominantly happy faces as angry. Independent of facial emotion, women with BPD showed enhanced early occipital P100 amplitudes. Additionally, temporo-occipital N170 amplitudes were reduced at right hemispherical electrode sites. Centroparietal P300 amplitudes were reduced particularly for predominantly happy faces and increased for highly angry faces in women with BPD, whereas in healthy volunteers this component was modulated by both angry and happy facial affect.LimitationsOur sample included only women, and no clinical control group was investigated.ConclusionOur findings suggest reduced thresholds for facial anger and deficits in the discrimination of facial happiness in individuals with BPD. This biased perception is associated with alterations in very early visual as well as deficient structural and categorical processing of faces. The current data could help to explain the negative perception of others that may be related to the patients’ impairments in interpersonal functioning.     

Facial EMG responses to dynamic emotional facial expressions in boys with disruptive behavior disorders

Based on the assumption that facial mimicry is a key factor in emotional empathy, and clinical observations that children with disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) are weak empathizers, the present study explored whether DBD boys are less facially responsive to facial expressions of emotions than normal controls. Facial electromyographic (EMG) activity in the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscle regions, and heart rate activity were studied in 22 clinically referred 8-12-year-old DBD boys and 22 age-matched normal controls during exposure to dynamic happy and angry expressions. Dispositional emotional empathy was assessed by a self-report questionnaire for children. The happy and angry facial expressions evoked distinct facial EMG response patterns, with increased zygomaticus muscle activity to happy expressions and increased corrugator muscle activity to angry expressions. The corrugator (but not the zygomaticus) muscle response pattern was less pronounced for DBD boys than the normal controls. Attending to the emotional expressions was associated with equivalent cardiac deceleration in both groups, reflecting a similar orienting/attention response. Lower empathy scores were obtained for DBD boys than for normal controls. In conclusion, facial mimicry responses to angry facial expressions were subnormal in DBD boys, which may be a sign of a deficient early component in the process of emotional empathy, and thus play a role in impaired empathic responding.     

Facial Expression Enhances Emotion Perception Compared to Vocal Prosody: Behavioral and fMRI Studies

Facial and vocal expressions are essential modalities mediating the perception of emotion and social communication. Nonetheless, currently little is known about how emotion perception and its neural substrates differ across facial expression and vocal prosody. To clarify this issue, functional MRI scans were acquired in Study 1, in which participants were asked to discriminate the valence of emotional expression (angry, happy or neutral) from facial, vocal, or bimodal stimuli. In Study 2, we used an affective priming task (unimodal materials as primers and bimodal materials as target) and participants were asked to rate the intensity, valence, and arousal of the targets. Study 1 showed higher accuracy and shorter response latencies in the facial than in the vocal modality for a happy expression. Whole-brain analysis showed enhanced activation during facial compared to vocal emotions in the inferior temporal-occipital regions. Region of interest analysis showed a higher percentage signal change for facial than for vocal anger in the superior temporal sulcus. Study 2 showed that facial relative to vocal priming of anger had a greater influence on perceived emotion for bimodal targets, irrespective of the target valence. These findings suggest that facial expression is associated with enhanced emotion perception compared to equivalent vocal prosodies.