Emotional Processing Deficits in Late-Life Depression

Objectives: Emotion dysregulation is associated with midlife major depressive disorder and is predictive of relapse, but its role in understanding the neurobiology of late-life depression (LLD) is unknown. The current pilot study investigated emotional processing in LLD. Methods: Depressed patients (N = 11, 7 women, mean age = 73 +/- 8.4 years) and healthy comparison subjects (HCs; N = 11, 8 women, mean age = 75 +/- 6.9 years) completed two tasks in which they viewed a series of faces with happy, sad, fearful, or neutral expressions and were instructed to make nonaffective judgements of faces or label the expression. Results: HCs showed longer response latencies to making judgements of all emotional expressions relative to neutral faces. In contrast, response latencies did not vary by emotion in LLDs. LLDs were also less accurate in correctly labeling neutral faces. Conclusions: These preliminary findings suggest that LLD is associated with alterations in emotional processing, which are distinct from the mood-congruent cognitive biases observed in younger depressed cohorts.(Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2010; 18: 652-656)