| Summary: | <p><strong>Background</strong></p> <p>Negative bias and aberrant neural processing of emotional faces are trait-marks of depression but findings in healthy high-risk groups are conflicting.</p> <p><strong>Methods</strong></p> <p>Healthy middle-aged dizygotic twins (<em>N</em> = 42) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): 22 twins had a co-twin history of depression (high-risk) and 20 were without co-twin history of depression (low-risk). During fMRI, participants viewed fearful and happy faces while performing a gender discrimination task. After the scan, they were given a faces dot-probe task, a facial expression recognition task and questionnaires assessing mood, personality traits and coping.</p> <p><strong>Results</strong></p> <p>Unexpectedly, high-risk twins showed <em>reduced</em> fear vigilance and <em>lower</em> recognition of fear and happiness relative to low-risk twins. During face processing in the scanner, high-risk twins displayed distinct <em>negative</em> functional coupling between the amygdala and ventral prefrontal cortex and pregenual anterior cingulate. This was accompanied by greater fear-specific fronto-temporal response and reduced fronto-occipital response to all emotional faces relative to baseline. The risk groups showed no differences in mood, subjective state or coping.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p> <p>Less susceptibility to fearful faces and negative cortico-limbic coupling during emotional face processing may reflect neurocognitive compensatory mechanisms in middle-aged dizygotic twins who remain healthy despite their familial risk of depression.</p>
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