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. 2008 Dec;47(12):1455-61.
doi: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e318188832e.

Risk for bipolar disorder is associated with face-processing deficits across emotions

Melissa A Brotman  1 , Martha Skup, Brendan A Rich, Karina S Blair, Daniel S Pine, James R Blair, Ellen Leibenluft
Affiliations

Risk for bipolar disorder is associated with face-processing deficits across emotions

Melissa A Brotman et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008 Dec.

Abstract

Objective: Youths with euthymic bipolar disorder (BD) have a deficit in face-emotion labeling that is present across multiple emotions. Recent research indicates that youths at familial risk for BD, but without a history of mood disorder, also have a deficit in face-emotion labeling, suggesting that such impairments may be an endophenotype for BD. It is unclear whether this deficit in at-risk youths is present across all emotions or if the impairment presents initially as an emotion-specific dysfunction that then generalizes to other emotions as the symptoms of BD become manifest.

Method: Thirty-seven patients with pediatric BD, 25 unaffected children with a first-degree relative with BD, and 36 typically developing youths were administered the Emotional Expression Multimorph Task, a computerized behavioral task, which presents gradations of facial emotions from 100% neutrality to 100% emotional expression (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust).

Results: Repeated-measures analysis of covariance revealed that, compared with the control youths, the patients and the at-risk youths required significantly more intense emotional information to identify and correctly label face emotions. The patients with BD and the at-risk youths did not differ from each other. Group-by-emotion interactions were not significant, indicating that the group effects did not differ based on the facial emotion.

Conclusions: The youths at risk for BD demonstrate nonspecific deficits in face-emotion recognition, similar to patients with the illness. Further research is needed to determine whether such deficits meet all the criteria for an endophenotype.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gradations of Multimorph Emotional Expression Examples of disgusted facial expressions across the 39 increment stages from 0% intensity (i.e. neutral) to 100% intensity (i.e. prototypical emotional expression). Reprinted from Rich et al. with permission from Development and Psychopathology.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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