Reduced eye gaze during facial emotion recognition in chronic depression: Effects of intranasal oxytocin

Chronic depression disorders (CDD) are characterized by impaired social cognitive functioning. Visual attention during social perception is altered in clinical depression and is known to be sensitive to intranasal treatment with oxytocin (OT). The present study thus investigated potential alterations in gaze preferences during a standard-ized facial emotion recognition (FER) task using remote eye tracking in patients with CDD and the effect of a single dose of intranasal OT (compared to placebo). In emotion recognition, CDD patients were not more impaired than healthy controls, and there was no OT effect. However, CDD patients (with placebo) demonstrated less attentional preference for the eye region during FER than healthy controls, which was not apparent in the CDD group after OT treatment. Our results suggest that despite largely preserved basic facial emotions recog-nition, attention in social perception may be altered in CDD, and that this bias may be sensitive to OT treatment. These findings highlight OTs potential as a means of augmenting psychotherapy.

Automated summary

Chronic depression disorders (CDD) are characterized by impaired social cognitive functioning. Visual attention during social perception is altered in CDD and is sensitive to intranasal treatment with oxytocin (OT). This study investigated gaze preferences during a facial emotion recognition task in CDD patients and the effect of intranasal OT. While CDD patients were not more impaired in emotion recognition and there was no OT effect, they demonstrated less attention to the eye region compared to healthy controls. This bias was reduced after OT treatment, suggesting the potential of OT to augment psychotherapy.