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Face tuning in female and male individuals with depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

J. Kubon ,
A. Sokolov ,
R. Popp ,
A. Fallgatter  and
M. Pavlova
J. Kubon*
Affiliation:
Psychiatry And Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
A. Sokolov
Affiliation:
Psychiatry And Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
R. Popp
Affiliation:
Psychiatry And Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
A. Fallgatter
Affiliation:
Psychiatry And Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
M. Pavlova
Affiliation:
Psychiatry And Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

The current COVID-19 pandemic brings social isolation to our daily lives that may elevate depression. The impact of major depressive disorder (MDD) on social cognitive functioning is far from understood, but essential for prevention and treatment of this neuropsychiatric condition.

Objectives

Our aim was to examine (i) whether face tuning is lower in depression; and (ii) how it is related to other cognitive abilities (such as perceptional organization). Furthermore, we intended to clarify gender impact on face tuning in MDD, as twice more females are affected.

Methods

Using a recently developed paradigm, the Face-n-Food task, we examined face tuning in 26 patients with MDD and 26 person-by-person matched controls. The advantage of non-face images is that its single elements do not promote face processing.

Results

Strikingly, MDD individuals showed intact face tuning. As sex ratio in our patient sample was about 2:1 (as in MDD population in general), we recruited additional male patients and found that MDD male patients were as good as female patients. Yet, while face tuning in MDD patients showed a significant correlation with perceptual organization abilities, in controls, it was linked with social cognition.

Conclusions

The outcome suggests that the origins of aberrant social functioning in MDD lie in maladaptive cognitive schemas rather than in a lack of sensitivity towards social signals per se. To elucidate neural circuits involved in face tuning in MDD, a magnetoencephalography (MEG) study with the Face-n-Food images is currently under progress.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Keywords

face pareidoliasocial cognitionDepressiongender impact
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 64 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 29th European Congress of Psychiatry , April 2021 , pp. S691
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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