Effect of Depression Severity on Emotion Context Insensitivity Revealed by Facial Activities Analysis

Bochao Zou, Yingxue Wang, Rui Liu, Xiang-wen Lyu, Lei Feng, Huimin Ma

Abstract: Major Depression Disorder (MDD) is defined as a mood condition. The Emotion Context Insensitivity (ECI) hypothesis of depression argues that the reaction sensitivity of depressed people to the changes of emotional context is attenuated. This paper designs an experiment under this hypothesis to more effectively distinguish facial cues for different levels of depression severity. By adopting publicly validated video stimuli for emotion elicitation, statistical analysis was performed to reveal significant facial features for depression severity assessment. The results found that the high severity group showed a decrease in specific action units and an increase in others, and made more intense facial movements for negative stimuli than that for positive and neutral stimuli. Hopefully, this study could benefit the interpretation of emotional functioning in depression and provide a reference for the evaluation of depression severity based on facial characteristics.