Depression Alters Processing of Visual Information According to Study

People with depression may see the world as flat or monochrome with a tinge of blue and gray. At first, experts assumed that this was just purely psychological, but several studies suggested that this might also have a biological basis.

According to Harvard Medical Publishing, a 2010 study entitled "Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue? Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased" published in Biological Psychiatry, suggests that depressed people may see the world gray because of impaired contrast perception.

Over a decade later, another study by psychiatry and psychology researchers from the University of Helinski studied how depression could affect visual perception.

The findings confirmed previous studies that said depression could alter the processing of visual information. The findings reveal that this is most likely due to the processing differences in the cerebral cortex.

The study, entitled "Reduced visual contrast suppression during major depressive episodes," was published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience.

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Depression Alters Processing of Visual Information, Study Says

Depressed People Perceived Contrast of Images Differently

Medical Xpress reported that researchers compared how depressed people process visual information to that of a control group using two perception tests, in which they need to compare the brightness and contrast of single patterns.

Academy of Finland Research Fellow Viljami Salmela said that the results suggest that people with depression perceived the contrast of images differently from those who do not have depression.

Depressed people perceived the patterns in the visual illusion as weaker and sees the contrast as somewhat stronger, compared to non-depressed individuals.

"The contrast was suppressed by roughly 20% among non-depressed subjects, while the corresponding figure for depressed patients was roughly 5%," Salmela explained.

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Usability of Perception Tests

Perception is the ability to take in, process, and actively make sense of the information gathered by the senses. It is the cognitive process of understanding the stimuli in the surroundings and an important ability that is essential to people's everyday lives, according to Cognifit Research.

People perceive things in either bottom-up and top-down processing. Researchers have created perception tests to measure how well they could perceive things or whether they have problems or may differ in perception compared to other groups.

The study showed that there are differences in brain function between people with depression and non-depressed individuals. scientists were able to understand the onset of these disorders and plan effective therapies through perception tests, News Medical Life Sciences reported.

Researchers believe that further research is needed on altered processing of visual perception caused by depression. They said it would be beneficial to assess and further develop the usability of perception tests in a what that could identify disturbances of information processing in people with depression.

For example, perception tests could serve as an additional tool for assessment in various therapies during treatment. But researchers cautioned that depression cannot be identified by visual perception tests because their study only showed small differences that could only be manifested when comparing different groups.