[Acoustic and optical perceptual disorders in depressive diseases--an overview of results from experimental studies]

This literature review concentrates on a disregarded part of depressive disorders' symptomatology (especially concerning present-day classifications of mental disorders) that can be approached with a great number of experimental procedures. From the acoustical field the following findings are demonstrated and discussed: elevated click thresholds in auditory signal detection, changed ear asymmetry in dichotic click detection and differences in dichotic listening asymmetries according to symptomatology. The most important results from the so far investigated optical perceptual disturbances in depressive disorders are: breakdown of perceptual defence in the form of greater access to emotionally unpleasant stimuli referring to the tachistoscopic recognition of neutral/unpleasant words, impairments at near-distance assessments, disturbances in recognition and discrimination of facial emotions-especially concerning the perception of emotional chimeric faces. Interpretational attempts for these acoustical and optical disturbances of perception reach from developmental psychology to biological psychiatry. Changes in hemisphere functions hold the dominating position in this discussion. Up to now it remains open to what extent the reported results correlate with the clinical phenomenology of depressive disorders, of what diagnostic specifity they are and if the can be viewed with sufficient reliability as state marker and indicators for theraopeutical effects.