An ERP Study of Implicit Emotion Processing in Depressed Suicide Attempters

Abstract

Major depressive disorder is associated with an increased risk of suicide. The aim of the present study was to compare changes in event-related potentials (ERP) of suicide attempters and non-attempters with major depressive disorder during an implicit emotion processing task. The results showed that the stimuli had a clear effect on the N2 and P3 amplitudes for both suicide attempters and non-attempters. More importantly, suicide attempters exhibited significantly higher P3 amplitudes between negative and neutral conditions than non-attempters. This could indicate that suicide attempters have a lower information burden and a weaker inhibitory process when processing emotional stimuli than non-attempters.