Facial emotion recognition in offspring of parents with bipolar disorder

Abstract Background Emotion recognition deficits, as an endophenotype, have been observed in both bipolar disorders (BD) and their first-degree relatives. This study aimed to investigate the differences in facial emotion recognition (emotion detection and emotion labeling) in offspring at high risk of bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy control subjects. Methods Offspring with a parent with type I bipolar disorder (High-risk group; n = 27) and age and sex-matched healthy control (HC) subjects (n = 27) performed facial emotion detection and reading tasks for neutral and basic emotions (fear, sadness, disgust, anger, surprise, happy) presented at low, medial, and high intensities. Results High-risk (HR) offspring made more errors on emotion recognition tasks than HC offspring. The HR demonstrated significant impairment in detecting low-intensity emotions, reading low and medial-intensity emotions, reading neutral, and all specific basic emotions. There were no significant group differences in the performance on detecting medial and high-intensity emotions and reading of high-intensity emotions. Conclusions The HR demonstrated impairments in recognition of low and medial-intensity emotions. The present study provides further support for emotion reading deficits as a candidate endophenotype for bipolar disorder.