Stable abnormalities on the recognition of dynamic angry facial emotional expression in subthreshold depression

Subthreshold depression (StD), a subclinical depression state, exhibits high prevalence and elevates the risk of developing major depressive disorder. Previous studies have found that individuals with StD were impaired in facial emotional expression recognition, and yet these studies primarily used static rather than dynamical facial emotional expressions with relatively highly ecological validity. It remains unclear whether StD could be associated with impaired recognition of dynamic facial emotional expressions and whether the abnormalities could be stable over time. Forty-six individuals with StD and forty-five non-depressed individuals performed a dynamic and a static facial emotional expression recognition task, and they also performed a follow-up assessment with the same tasks as the initial assessment after a 4-month interval. In the dynamic task, StD individuals showed lower recognition thresholds only for the angry emotional expression at both the initial and follow-up assessments, compared to the non-depressed individuals. In the static task, the StD group demonstrated significantly higher accuracy only for angry expressions at the initial assessment but did not at the follow-up assessment. These results indicate that the dynamic facial expression recognition task, recruiting higher ecological validity relative to the static task, may be a potential tool as an auxiliary objective marker for depression.