Running head: Deficient inhibition in depression Deficient Distracter Inhibition and Enhanced Facilitation for Emotional Stimuli in Depression: An ERP Study

﹡Corresponding author：doctor's degree， major in medical psychology.Abstract The aim of the present study was to investigate distracter inhibition ability and facilitation for emotional faces in depression using a negative affective priming (NAP) task combined with event-related potentials (ERP). Participants were instructed to evaluate the valence of the target, which had been primed or inhibited on a preceding trial. The reaction times and the ERP amplitudes were recorded during the task. In a first behavioral experiment, control participants (NC), participants who were currently remitted (RMD), and participants diagnosed with a current major depressive disorder (MDD), performed a modified the NAP task. The main finding was that compared with NC groups, MDD participants had enhanced positive priming and less inhibition of sad faces. RMD individuals were characterized by general inhibitory impairments for all emotional faces and a facilitation for sad faces compared with NC individuals. In a second experiment combing the modified NAP task with ERP, the MDD participants had a larger P1 and P3 amplitude for sad faces in the positive priming condition compared with the other groups, and smaller P3 amplitude for sad faces in negative priming condition compared with other faces. Interestingly, RMD participants showed a distinct pattern of results compared with NC and MDD participants. They had larger N1 amplitude for happy faces and larger P1 and P3 amplitude for sad faces in the positive priming condition relative to the other conditions, while they had smaller P3 amplitude for both happy and sad faces in the negative priming condition. Across two experiments, it can be concluded that MDD participants have deficient distracter inhibition and excessive facilitation for negative stimuli. The RMD participants showed a mixed pattern of deficient distracter inhibition and excessive facilitation for both positive and negative stimuli, the results were largely consistent with our previous study. This deficiency has a high explanatory value for information-processing bias and the neuropsychological-3-impairments observed in depression.