Dataset Information

Neural temporal dynamics of stress in comorbid major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite advances in neurobiological research on Major Depressive Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder, little is known about the neural functioning of individuals with comorbid depression/social anxiety. We examined the timing of neural responses to social stress in individuals with major depression and/or social anxiety. We hypothesized that having social anxiety would be associated with earlier responses to stress, having major depression would be associated with sustained responses to stress, and that comorbid participants would exhibit both of these response patterns.

Methods

Participants were females diagnosed with pure depression (n?=?12), pure social anxiety (n?=?16), comorbid depression/social anxiety (n?=?17), or as never having had any Axis-I disorder (control; n?=?17). Blood oxygenation-level dependent activity (BOLD) was assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). To induce social stress, participants prepared a speech that was ostensibly to be evaluated by a third party.

Results

Whereas being diagnosed with depression was associated with a resurgence of activation in the medial frontal cortex late in the stressor, having social anxiety was associated with a vigilance-avoidance activation pattern in the occipital cortex and insula. Comorbid participants exhibited activation patterns that generally overlapped with the non-comorbid groups, with the exception of an intermediate level of activation, between the level of activation of the pure depression and social anxiety groups, in the middle and posterior cingulate cortex.

Conclusions

These findings advance our understanding of the neural underpinnings of major depression and social anxiety, and of their comorbidity. Future research should elucidate more precisely the behavioral correlates of these patterns of brain activation.

SUBMITTER: Waugh CE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3583464 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Neural temporal dynamics of stress in comorbid major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder.

Waugh Christian E CE Hamilton J Paul JP Chen Michael C MC Joormann Jutta J Gotlib Ian H IH

Biology of mood & anxiety disorders 20120622

<h4>Background</h4>Despite advances in neurobiological research on Major Depressive Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder, little is known about the neural functioning of individuals with comorbid depression/social anxiety. We examined the timing of neural responses to social stress in individuals with major depression and/or social anxiety. We hypothesized that having social anxiety would be associated with earlier responses to stress, having major depression would be associated with sustained r ...[more]

PMID: 22738335

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Project description:BackgroundSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are highly comorbid and share impairments in self-referential and social processing. Many naturalistic judgements activate these processes concurrently, which can be referred to as "self-other referential processing". We sought to examine its neural correlates in young people with SAD and MDD using a novel experimental task.MethodsFifty six young people aged 16 to 25 with diagnoses of SAD and/or MDD (15 with SAD [M = 20.3 years, 60% female], 17 with MDD [M = 19.8 years, 53% female], 24 with comorbid SAD and MDD [M = 19.8 years, 67% female]) and 76 age and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs; M = 20.7 years, 66% female) completed a novel self-other referential processing fMRI task that involved rating how much one related to emotional faces in active conditions and judging how far apart each person's eyes were in control conditions.ResultsParticipants with SAD had more and those with MDD had less activity in social cognitive areas than HCs when processing social information across all conditions and emotion types. Participants with comorbid SAD-MDD exhibited a distinct pattern of neural activity to patients with single diagnoses. Across the whole sample, the activation of reward system areas (the medial orbitofrontal cortex and caudate) in response to increasing relatedness correlated positively with a dimensional measure of social anxiety.ConclusionsYoung people with SAD, MDD and comorbid SAD-MDD showed deficits in social processing, but they were not specifically related to self-other referential processing. Dimensional social anxiety symptoms were correlated with reward system activation, suggesting that such symptoms are associated with an overestimation of the hedonic value of social stimuli. These novel findings have implications for our understanding of the neural correlates of SAD and MDD, suggesting that alterations in social processing and reward functioning underlie the impairments in self and social processing that characterize both disorders.

Project description:BackgroundAn overlap of clinical symptoms between major depressive disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggests that the two disorders exhibit similar brain mechanisms. However, few studies have directly compared the brain structures of the two disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness alterations between non-comorbid medication-naive MDD patients and SAD patients.MethodsHigh-resolution T1-weighted images were acquired from 37 non-comorbid MDD patients, 24 non-comorbid SAD patients and 41 healthy controls (HCs). Voxel-based morphometry analysis of the GMV (corrected with a false discovery rate of p<0.001) and vertex-based analysis of cortical thickness (corrected with a clusterwise probability of p<0.001) were performed, and group differences were compared by ANOVA followed by post hoc tests.OutcomesRelative to the HCs, both the MDD patients and SAD patients showed the following results: GMV reductions in the bilateral orbital frontal cortex (OFC), putamen, and thalamus; cortical thickening in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex, posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, insular cortex, left temporal pole, and right superior parietal cortex; and cortical thinning in the left lateral OFC and bilateral rostral middle frontal cortex. In addition, MDD patients specifically showed a greater thickness in the left fusiform gyrus and right lateral occipital cortex and a thinner thickness in the bilateral lingual and left cuneus. SAD patients specifically showed a thinner cortical thickness in the right precentral cortex.InterpretationOur results indicate that MDD and SAD share common patterns of gray matter abnormalities in the orbitofrontal-striatal-thalamic circuit, salience network and dorsal attention network. These consistent structural differences in the two patient groups may contribute to the broad spectrum of emotional, cognitive and behavioral disturbances observed in MDD patients and SAD patients. In addition, we found disorder-specific involvement of the visual processing regions in MDD and the precentral cortex in SAD. These findings provide new evidence regarding the shared and specific neuropathological mechanisms that underlie MDD and SAD.

Dataset Information

Neural temporal dynamics of stress in comorbid major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Neural temporal dynamics of stress in comorbid major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder.

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