Autonomic aspect of emotional response in depressed patients: relationships with personality

Affective symptoms are major descriptors of depression; therefore, a lot of studies investigated emotional-responsiveness modulation in depression, and reported either a potentiation of negative affects, a reduction of positive affects, or a reduction of both positive and negative affects. On the other hand, personality was classically found to be modulated in depression, with behavioral inhibition system (BIS)-related dimensions (namely harm avoidance (HA), neuroticism) showing higher scores in depressed subjects. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between emotional responsiveness (as measured by skin conductance response [SCR]) and personality in depression.

SCR was recorded following the presentation of neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant pictures in 20 depressed subjects and 20 controls.

Pleasant pictures elicited more and larger responses than unpleasant ones in control but not in depressed subjects. This effect was not modulated by personality. Moreover, depressed subjects were found to show generally faster half-recovery times and to rate emotional pictures as less arousing than control subjects and these effects disappeared when BIS-related dimensions were controlled.

These results suggest that BIS-related dimensions are independent from the specifically reduced responses to pleasant pictures, but are involved in the observed general affect reducing.