[The recognition of the facial expression of emotions by patients with endogenous depression (clinico-psychophysiological research)].

The recognition of facial emotional expression in depressed patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and slow progressive schizophrenia (SPS) in acute state and in remission was studied in comparison with healthy persons. All the subjects were right-handed. The drawings of sad, neutral and happy faces followed by masking stimulus were displayed in the center field and in the left or right hemifield of vision on the computer screen for 80 ms. All the depressed patients revealed marked impairment of facial emotion recognition, especially for negative on, and disturbances of hemisphere asymmetry. There were some differences between MDD and SPS patients. The MDD patients showed more significant impairment of emotion recognition and right hemisphere disfunction. The SPS patients were less impaired and revealed mild worsening in the left hemisphere only. In remission MDD patients showed a significant improvement of emotion recognition contrary to SPS patients who failed to recover this function. The revealed emotion recognition disturbances in MDD patients are supposed to be dynamic, whereas in depressed patients with SPS it is considered to be a trait feature.