Abstract
Neuropsychological impairment has long been established as a fundamental characteristic of depression, but a generally accepted, specific pattern of neuropsychological impairment has not been summarized. In this study, we examined the classic neuropsychological paradigm of self-face recognition, to explore whether the self was impaired in major depressive disorder (MDD). Eighteen MDD patients and 20 healthy subjects were recruited to participate in this study. By using a face morphing technique, we measured the size of processing bias in MDD patients during different face discrimination tasks relative to controls. Results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant main effect of Group (F (1, 36) = 7.388, P = 0.01). Subsequent independent t-tests further revealed that self bias (t = 2.636, P = 0.012) and self-recognition bias (t = 2.190, P = 0.035) observed in self-famous task and self-stranger task respectively for patients were significantly greater than that for controls. Both self-processing and self-recognition were impaired in patients with MDD, indicating that MDD individuals might exist level of self-abnormalities. These findings provide a new perspective for further study on the etiological and pathological mechanisms of MDD.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Beijing Education Committee Funds (1102013501). The authors thank all the participants for their assistance in the study.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Shanshan Liu and Xin Ma contributed equally to this work.
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Liu, S., Ma, X., Yin, M. et al. Neuropsychological impairment: the disturbed effect of self-processing in patients with major depressive disorder. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 3595–3601 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0198-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0198-5