Facial emotion perception in young female students with subsyndromal panic disorder. Behavioral and ERP study.

This study aimed to examine the behavioral and neural correlates of facial emotion recognition in young women with subsyndromal panic disorder (SPD). In the experiment 15 non-medicated women with SPD and 17 matched healthy controls were tasked with recognizing angry, fearful, happy, and neutral facial expressions, and accuracy, reaction time (RT), and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Significant between-group differences in behavioral characteristics (accuracy of emotion recognition and RT) were not found, however, the SPD subjects demonstrated a slower response to fearful expressions compared to neutral and happy expressions.