Bipolar patients show mood-congruent biases in sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion when exhibiting depressed symptoms, but not when exhibiting manic symptoms.

Introduction: A number of studies have reported mood-congruent biases in processing facial expressions of emotion in depression and mania. Most of them have failed to establish that mood reliably affects relevant more than irrelevant expressions, or that the effect is specifically mood-related rather than due to resource or task difficulty artefacts. The aim was to examine, using appropriate statistical methods, whether depressed mood in bipolar patients decreases and manic mood increases sensitivity to facial expressions of happiness and vice versa for facial expressions of negative emotion.

Facial expression perception: an objective outcome measure for treatment studies in mood disorders?

Facial expressions are important cues used in social communication. Studies in both patients with mood disorders and healthy volunteers have shown that facial expression perception can vary according to current mood state. Interpretation or perception of facial expressions can also be altered by administration of certain psychopharmacological agents.

Perception of facial expressions of emotion in bipolar disorder.

Objectives: Some studies have reported deficits in the perception of facial expressions among depressed individuals compared with healthy controls, while others have reported negative biases in expression perception. We examined whether altered perception of emotion reflects an underlying trait-like effect in affective disorder by examining facial expression perception in euthymic bipolar patients.

Methods: Sensitivity to six different facial expressions, as well as accuracy of emotion recognition, was examined among 17 euthymic bipolar patients and 17 healthy controls using an interactive computer program.