• Zhenhe Zhou, Suxia Cao, Hengfen Li, and Youhui Li.
• Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, 1 East Jianshe Road, Zhengzhou, Henan Province 450000, China; Department of Psychiatry, Wuxi Mental Health Center of Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China.
• J Clin Neurosci. 2015 Oct 1; 22 (10): 1609-13.

AbstractWe hypothesized that treatment with escitalopram would improve cognitive bias and contribute to the recovery process for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Many previous studies have established that patients with MDD tend to pay selective attention to negative stimuli. The assessment of the level of cognitive bias is regarded as a crucial dimension of treatment outcomes for MDD. To our knowledge, no prior studies have been reported on the effects of treatment with escitalopram on attentional bias in MDD, employing a dot probe task of facial expression. We studied 25 patients with MDD and 25 controls, and used a dot probe task of facial expression to measure cognitive bias. The patients' psychopathologies were rated using the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) at baseline and after 8 weeks of treatment with escitalopram. All participants performed the facial expression dot probe task. The results revealed that the 8 week escitalopram treatment decreased the HAMD scores. The patients with MDD at baseline exhibited an attentional bias towards negative faces, however, no significant bias toward either negative or happy faces were observed in the controls. After the 8 week escitalopram treatment, no significant bias toward negative faces was observed in the patient group. In conclusion, patients with MDD pay more attention to negative facial expressions, and treatment with escitalopram improves this attentional bias toward negative facial expressions. This is the first study, to our knowledge, on the effects of treatment with escitalopram on attentional bias in patients with MDD that has employed a dot probe task of facial expression.Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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