The neurobiology of self face recognition among depressed adolescents

The neurophysiology of self-face recognition is altered in adolescent depression. Specifically, depression was associated with decreased activity in neural areas that support emotional and associative processing for positive self-faces and increased processing for neutral self-faces. These results suggest that depression in adolescents is associated with hypoactive emotional processing and encoding of positive self-related visual information. This abnormal neural activity at the intersection of reward and self-processing among depressed youth might have long lasting impact in self-formation and future adult self-representations, given that adolescence is a sensitive period for self-development.