Early Impairment of Face Perception in Post-Stroke Depression: An ERP Study

Objective: Face recognition is an important cognitive function of the human brain. Post stroke depression (PSD) is a common mental complication after stroke, which has a serious impact on individual physical function recovery and quality of life. This study aims to explore the face perception characteristics of PSD through electrophysiological indicators N170 and VPP, and provide an objective basis for the early evaluation of facial cognitive dysfunction in PSD. Methods: 58 patients in the cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) with depressive symptoms (PSD) and 188 patients in the pure CSVD (NPSD). At the same time, 30 healthy subjects were selected as the healthy controls (HC). The differences of N170 and VPP components between the three groups were compared under the stimulation of inverted faces and upright faces. Results: PSD patients exhibited significantly longer peak latency and lower amplitude of N170 and VPP under both inverted and upright face stimulation compared to HC and NPSD. These results suggest that PSD patients have defects in early face recognition, there are abnormalities in the early perception and structural encoding of face information, and both the “overall mechanism” and “feature mechanism” of face recognition are damaged. Conclusions: These findings provide neuroelectrophysiological evidence for impaired emotionless face recognition in PSD patients.