Abstract # 3184 Low grade inflammation induces negative bias in categorization of emotional information

Publication date: February 2019Source: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Volume 76, SupplementAuthor(s): S. Hulsken, L. Balter, S. Aldred, J. Veldhuijzen van Zanten, S. Higgs, J. BoschNegative processing biases towards valenced information are a hallmark of depression. We set out to test whether peripheral inflammation can induce such negative interpretation biases. Forty healthy adult men received Salmonella Typhi vaccination and placebo injections on two separate days, using a double-blind crossover design. Blood samples were taken at baseline, 5.5h and 8h post-injection. The participants completed the P1vital® Oxford Emotional Test Battery, which included a Facial Expression Recognition Task (in which a range of intensities of six emotional facial expressions are classified) and Emotional Categorisation and Recall tasks (in which personality descriptors are categorized as positive or negative, and also later recalled). Vaccination increased Interleukin-6 from 1.18 to a peak of 5.21pg/mL at 5.5h post injection (p < .001). The vaccination did not cause significant alterations in mood or physical symptom reporting. In the inflammation condition, accuracy was lower in identifying positive personality descriptors (p = .041) compared to placebo, whereas higher accuracy was seen in identifying negative personality descriptors (p = .034). There was no effect of inflammation on word recall or recognition of emotional facial expressions. This is the first study to show that in...

Source: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity - February 12, 2019 Category: Neurology Source Type: research