Dataset Information

Neural and behavioral correlates of negative self-focused thought associated with depression.

ABSTRACT: A central feature of major depression (MDD) is heightened negative self-focused thought (negative-SFT). Neuroscientific research has identified abnormalities in a network of brain regions in MDD, including brain areas associated with SFT such as medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). To our knowledge no studies have investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of negative-SFT using a sentence completion task in a sample of individuals with varying depression histories and severities. We test the following hypotheses: (1) negative-SFT will be associated with depression; and (2) depression and negative-SFT will be related to resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) for brain regions implicated in SFT. Seventy-nine women with varying depression histories and severities completed a sentence completion task and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Standard seed-based voxelwise rsFC was conducted for self-network regions of interest: dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC) and pregenual ACC (pgACC). We performed linear regression analyses to examine the relationships among depression, negative-SFT, and rsFC for the dmPFC and pgACC. Greater negative-SFT was associated with depression history and severity. Greater negative-SFT predicted increased rsFC between dmPFC and pgACC seeds and dorsolateral prefrontal (dlPFC) and parietal regions; depression group was also associated with increased pgACC-dlPFC connectivity. These findings are consistent with previous literature reporting elevated negative-SFT thought in MDD. Our rs-fMRI results provide novel support linking negative-SFT with increased rsFC between self-network and frontoparietal network regions across different levels of depression. Broadly, these findings highlight a dimension of social-affective functioning that may underlie MDD and other psychiatric conditions.

SUBMITTER: Philippi CL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5895491 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a serious problem in adolescents. Development and optimization of novel interventions for these youth will require a deeper knowledge of the neurobiology of depression. A well-established phenomenon of depression is an attention bias toward negativity and away from positivity that is evidenced behaviorally and neurally, but it is unclear how symptom reduction is related to changes to this bias. Neurobiological research using a treatment probe has promise to help discover the neural changes that accompany symptom improvement. Ketamine has utility for such research because of its known rapid and strong antidepressant effects in the context of TRD. Our previous study of six open-label ketamine infusions in 11 adolescents with TRD showed variable response, ranging from full remission, partial response, non-response, or clinical worsening. In this study, we examined the performance of these participants on Word Face Stroop (WFS) fMRI task where they indicated the valence of affective words superimposed onto either congruent or incongruent emotional faces before and after the ketamine infusions. Participants also completed a clinical assessment (including measurement of depression symptomology and anhedonia/pleasure) before and after the ketamine infusions. Following ketamine treatment, better WFS performance correlated with self-reported decreased depressive symptoms and increased pleasure. Analyses of corticolimbic, corticostriatal and default mode (DMN) networks showed that across networks, decreased activation during all conditions (congruent negative, congruent positive, incongruent negative, and incongruent positive) correlated with decreases in depressive symptoms and with increases in pleasure. These findings suggest that in adolescents with TRD, clinical improvement may require an attenuation of the negativity bias and re-tuning of these three critical neural networks to attenuate DMN and limbic regions activation and allow more efficient recruitment of the reward network. Lower activation across conditions may facilitate shifting across different salient emotional stimuli rather than getting trapped in downward negative spirals.

Dataset Information

Neural and behavioral correlates of negative self-focused thought associated with depression.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets