Given the prevalence of adolescent depression and the modest effects of current treatments, research ought to inform development of effective intervention strategies. Self-compassion is inversely associated with depression, and self-compassion interventions have demonstrated promising effects on reducing depression. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying that relationship. Maladaptive self-processing is a characteristic of depression that contributes to the onset and chronicity of depression. Because our own face is an automatic and direct cue for self-processing, this study investigated whether self-compassion was associated with neural responses during sad v. neutral self-face recognition and explore their relationship with depression severity in depressed adolescents and healthy controls (HCs).

During functional magnetic resonance imaging, 81 depressed youth and 37 HCs were instructed to identify whether morphed self or other faces with sad, happy, or neutral expressions resembled their own.

Self-compassion correlated negatively with activity during sad v. neutral self-face recognition in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the total sample, and in the right posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus in HCs, respectively. In depressed adolescents, higher self-compassion correlated with lower activity during sad v. neutral self-face recognition in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), implying that less cognitive effort might be needed to avoid dwelling on sad self-faces and/or regulate negative affect induced by them. Moreover, higher self-compassion mediated the relationship between lower DLPFC activity and reduced depression severity.

Our findings imply that DLPFC activity might be a biological marker of a successful self-compassion intervention as potential treatment for adolescent depression.

Individuals with bipolar disorder demonstrate abnormal social function. Neuroimaging studies in bipolar disorder have shown functional abnormalities in neural circuitry supporting face emotion processing, but have not examined face identity processing, a key component of social function. We aimed to elucidate functional abnormalities in neural circuitry supporting face emotion and face identity processing in bipolar disorder.

Twenty-seven individuals with bipolar disorder I currently euthymic and 27 healthy controls participated in an implicit face processing, block-design paradigm. Participants labeled color flashes that were superimposed on dynamically changing background faces comprising morphs either from neutral to prototypical emotion (happy, sad, angry and fearful) or from one identity to another identity depicting a neutral face. Whole-brain and amygdala region-of-interest (ROI) activities were compared between groups.

There was no significant between-group difference looking across both emerging face emotion and identity. During processing of all emerging emotions, euthymic individuals with bipolar disorder showed significantly greater amygdala activity. During facial identity and also happy face processing, euthymic individuals with bipolar disorder showed significantly greater amygdala and medial prefrontal cortical activity compared with controls.

This is the first study to examine neural circuitry supporting face identity and face emotion processing in bipolar disorder. Our findings of abnormally elevated activity in amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during face identity and happy face emotion processing suggest functional abnormalities in key regions previously implicated in social processing. This may be of future importance toward examining the abnormal self-related processing, grandiosity and social dysfunction seen in bipolar disorder.