Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
J Psychopharmacol. 2010 Oct;24(10):1447-54. doi: 10.1177/0269881109348169. Epub 2009 Nov 25.
In healthy never-depressed individuals, acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) may selectively decrease the accurate recognition of fearful facial expressions. Here we investigated the perception of facial emotions after ATD in more detail. We also investigated whether bright light, which can reverse ATD's mood-lowering effect, can also reverse its effect on the perception of facial emotions. On two separate test days, spent in a room that was either bright (n = 14) or dim (n = 16), healthy never-depressed women completed a facial emotion perception task six hours after ingesting tryptophan-deficient and balanced amino acid mixtures. Treatments were administered double blind and in randomized order using a crossover design. In dim light ATD decreased recognition accuracy of anger, disgust, and surprise. The labeling of fear and sadness was not affected. In bright light no effects of ATD were seen. Bright light was identified as a potential confounding factor in task performance. The effects of ATD on facial emotion perception may be less emotion-specific than thought previously, and occurred in a direction opposite to what might be expected based on theories of mood-congruent bias.
在健康从未抑郁的个体中，急性色氨酸耗竭（ATD）可能会选择性地降低对恐惧面部表情的准确识别。在这里，我们更详细地研究了 ATD 后对面部情绪的感知。我们还研究了明亮的光线是否可以逆转 ATD 对情绪的降低作用，以及是否可以逆转其对面部情绪感知的影响。在两个单独的测试日中，在明亮（n = 14）或昏暗（n = 16）的房间中度过，健康从未抑郁的女性在摄入色氨酸缺乏和平衡氨基酸混合物后六小时完成了面部情绪感知任务。使用交叉设计进行双盲和随机顺序给药。在昏暗的光线下，ATD 会降低对愤怒，厌恶和惊讶的识别准确性。恐惧和悲伤的标签不受影响。在明亮的光线下，ATD 没有效果。明亮的光线被确定为任务表现的潜在混杂因素。ATD 对面部情绪感知的影响可能不如以前认为的那样具有情绪特异性，并且与基于情绪一致偏见理论的预期方向相反。
