Recognizing Facial Expressions: Neural Correlates of Depression

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry assessed the ability of depressed patients to recognize and process the affective facial expressions of others—a strong feature of interpersonal relationships. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the “implicit affect recognition” of a 19-patient cohort to a 19-person healthy comparison group. Patients had a mean age of 43.2 years, suffered from major depression, and were medication-free at the baseline fMRI scan, receiving fluoxetine 20 mg/day thereafter. The neural processing impairments of patients, which limited recognition of happy expressions, were reversed following treatment. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/164/4/599

-LS