The Depressed Patients’ Reappraisal To Negative Emotion:An ERP Study

Depression is a kind of mental disease that is common and easy to be relapsed. The enormous pressure of modern life makes the incidence of depression increase constantly, that seriously harms people’s physical and mental health and even life. But because of the depression symptoms are not obvious, depression patients often ignore their disease, and don’t treat in time. When in face of negative scenarios, patients with depression often use inappropriate emotion regulation strategies (eg, rumination), and rarely use effective emotion regulation strategies (eg, cognitive reappraisal). Many researchers believe that it is this mood disorders that lead depression to happen and continue, but the experimental evidence supporting this view is very few, and no research up to now has tested whether patients with depression can regulate emotion successfully under the guidance.By using the event-related potentials (ERP) technology, improving the experimental method, we tested the effectiveness of patients with depression using cognitive reappraisal and distraction under guidance. We conducted2(subjects: depression patients, normal subjects)×3(emotion regulation strategies:cognitive reappraisal, distraction, simply watching) mixed design, with subjects type as the between-subjects factor and emotion regulation strategies as the within-subjects factor.10unmedicated patients with depression were selected strictly as the depression group and15college students for the normal control group. We guided two group subjects to regulate their negative emotion (by cognitive reappraisal and distraction) which were induced by standard negative emotional pictures. Then the emotional pictures presented again, and the subjects’ emotional experience strength and EEG data were recorded. The results showed that:from the behavioral data, regardless of the depression subjects and normal subjects, cognitive reappraisal (not distraction) reduced the negative emotional experience, but the two subject groups had no significant differences; the EEG data reflected that regardless of depression subjects and normal subjects, cognitive reappraisal decreased the LPP amplitude and distraction increased the LPP volatility, but the degree of the LPP amplitude decreased using cognitive reappraisal by deppression suubjects was smaller and time duration was shoter (300-600ms).The experimental results suggest that the depression suubjects can reduce the negative emotional experience and the LPP volatility under the guidance of cognitive reappraisal, which is an effective emotion regulation strategy, but distraction is inappropriate; the results also confirm that the emotion regulation ability of patients with depression is impaired, although they can use cognitive reappraisal sucessfully under guidance, but the effect is not as good as normal subjects. This study expands Gross’s process model of emotion regulation, provides a more objective indicator for the diagnosis of depression, and guides the treatment of depression.