Facial Expression Recognition and ReHo Analysis in Major Depressive Disorder

Objective: To explore the characteristics of expression recognition and spontaneous activity of the resting state brain in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients to find the neural basis of expression recognition and emotional processing. Methods: In this study, two of the six facial expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, aversion, and surprise) were presented in quick succession using a short expression recognition test. The differences in facial expression recognition between MDD patients and healthy people were compared. Further, the differences in ReHo values between the two groups were compared using a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan to investigate the characteristics of spontaneous brain activity in the resting state and its relationship with clinical symptoms and the accuracy of facial expression recognition in patients with MDD. Results: (1) The accuracy of facial expression recognition in patients with MDD was lower than that of the HC group. There were differences in facial expression recognition between the two groups in sadness-anger ( p = 0.026), surprise-aversion ( p = 0.038), surprise-happiness ( p = 0.014), surprise-sadness ( p = 0.019), fear-happiness ( p = 0.027), and fear-anger ( p = 0.009). The reaction time for facial expression recognition in the patient group was significantly longer than that of the HC group. (2) Compared with the HC group, the ReHo values decreased in the left parahippocampal gyrus, left thalamus, right putamen, left putamen, and right angular gyrus, and increased in the left superior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, left medial superior frontal gyrus, and right medial superior frontal gyrus in the patient group. (3) Spearman correlation analysis showed no statistical correlation between ReHo and HAMD-17 scores in MDD patients ( p > 0.05). The ReHo value of the left putamen was negatively correlated with the recognition of fear-surprise ( r = −0.429, p = 0.016), the ReHo value of the right angular gyrus was positively correlated with the recognition of sadness-anger ( r = 0.367, p = 0.042), and the ReHo value of the right medial superior frontal gyrus was negatively correlated with the recognition of fear-anger ( r = −0.377, p = 0.037). Conclusion: In view of the different performance of patients with MDD in facial expression tasks, facial expression recognition may have some suggestive effect on the diagnosis of depression and has clinical guiding significance. Ma