Emotional subtypes in patients with depression: A cluster analysis.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with deficits in emotion experience, expression and regulation. Whilst emotion regulation deficits prolong MDD, emotion expression influences symptomatic presentations, and anticipatory pleasure deficits predict recurrence risk. Profiling MDD patients from an emotion componential perspective can characterize subtypes with different clinical and functional outcomes. This study aimed to investigate emotional subtypes of MDD. A two-stage cluster analysis applied to 150 MDD patients. Clustering variables included emotion experience measured by Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale, emotion expression measured by Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and emotion regulation measured by Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. We validated the resultant clusters by comparing their symptoms and functioning with that of 50 controls. Cluster 1 (n = 50) exhibited intact emotion experience and expression yet adopted reappraisal rather than suppression strategy, whereas Cluster 2 (n = 66) exhibited generalized emotional deficits. Cluster 3 (n = 34) exhibited emotion expression deficits and adopted both reappraisal and suppression strategies. On validation, Cluster 2 exhibited the worst, but Cluster 1 exhibited the least symptoms and social functioning impairments. Cluster 3 was intermediate among the two other subtypes. Our findings support the existence of different emotional subtypes in MDD patients, and have clinical and theoretical implications for developing future specific treatments for MDD.

Audiovisual temporal processing in adult patients with first-episode schizophrenia and high-functioning autism.

Schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are both neurodevelopmental disorders with altered sensory processing. Widened temporal binding window (TBW) signifies reduced sensitivity to detect stimulus asynchrony, and may be a shared feature in schizophrenia and ASD. Few studies directly compared audiovisual temporal processing ability in the two disorders. We recruited 43 adult patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES), 35 average intelligent and verbally-fluent adult patients with high-functioning ASD and 48 controls. We employed two unisensory Temporal Order Judgement (TOJ) tasks within visual or auditory modalities, and two audiovisual Simultaneity Judgement (SJ) tasks with flash-beeps and videos of syllable utterance as stimuli. Participants with FES exhibited widened TBW affecting both speech and non-speech processing, which were not attributable to altered unisensory sensory acuity because they had normal visual and auditory TOJ thresholds. However, adults with ASD exhibited intact unisensory and audiovisual temporal processing. Lower non-verbal IQ was correlated with larger TBW width across the three groups. Taking our findings with earlier evidence in chronic samples, widened TBW is associated with schizophrenia regardless illness stage. The altered audiovisual temporal processing in ASD may ameliorate after reaching adulthood.