Differential impairments of facial affect priming in subjects with acute or partially remitted major depressive episodes

Eleven subjects with acute major depressive episodes and 9 subjects with partially remitted major depressive episodes were compared with 24 healthy control subjects on an emotional priming task. Positive and negative emotional facial expressions were presented as subthreshold primes, followed by a neutral pattern mask, and an emotionally neutral face as suprathreshold target. Subjects had to judge if they had seen a pleasant or an unpleasant facial expression. Healthy subjects and subjects with partially remitted depression judged the neutral target as significantly more unpleasant when negative emotional facial expressions were presented as primes as compared with when positive facial expressions were presented as primes. In contrast, subjects with acute depression did not show a significant judgment shift. It is concluded that subjects with acute depression are not able to preactivate emotional concepts by subthreshold-presented emotional facial expressions.