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Preschool-Onset Major Depressive Disorder is Characterized by Electrocortical Deficits in Processing Pleasant Emotional Pictures.

ABSTRACT: Reductions in positive affect are a salient feature of preschool-onset major depressive disorder. Yet, little is known about the psychophysiological correlates of this blunted positive affect and whether reduced physiological responding to pleasant stimuli may differentiate depressed and healthy young children. 120 four-to-seven year old children with current depression and 63 psychiatrically healthy 4-to-7 year old children completed a simple picture-viewing task of pleasant and neutral pictures while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The early-childhood version of the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Depression was used to establish psychiatric diagnoses. A one-way ANCOVA was used to test for group differences in response to pleasant and neutral pictures. Young children with depression showed a reduced response to pleasant vs. neutral pictures (LPP), after controlling for children's age (F(1,180)?=?4.15, p?=?0.04, ?2?=?0.02). The LPP for the children with preschool-onset depression (M?=?0.99, SE?=?0.65) was significantly smaller than the LPP in the healthy group of young children (M?=?3.27, SE?=?0.90). This difference did not vary as a function of depression or anhedonia severity within the group with depression or the healthy children. Similar to older children and adolescents with depression, young children with depression display reductions in responsivity to pleasant stimuli as indexed by the LPP. These findings extend prior findings indicating a blunted response to pleasant stimuli in preschool- onset depression. Given the greater neuroplasticity of emotional response and regulation, these findings suggest clinical attention to emotional response to pleasure is an important target in preschool-onset depression. Clinical trial registration information: A Randomized Control Trial of PCIT-ED for Preschool Depression; http://clinicaltrials.gov/;NCT02076425.

SUBMITTER: Whalen DJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7286427 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:From an evolutionary perspective, environmental threats relevant for survival constantly challenged human beings. Current research suggests the evolution of a fear processing module in the brain to cope with these threats. Recently, humans increasingly encountered modern threats (e.g., guns or car accidents) in addition to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes or predators) which presumably required an adaptation of perception and behavior. However, the neural processes underlying the perception of these different threats remain to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of image content (i.e., evolutionary vs. modern threats) on the activation of neural networks of emotion processing. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 41 participants watched affective pictures displaying evolutionary-threatening, modern-threatening, evolutionary-neutral and modern-neutral content. Evolutionary-threatening stimuli evoked stronger activations than modern-threatening stimuli in left inferior frontal gyrus and thalamus, right middle frontal gyrus and parietal regions as well as bilaterally in parietal regions, fusiform gyrus and bilateral amygdala. We observed the opposite effect, i.e., higher activity for modern-threatening than for evolutionary-threatening stimuli, bilaterally in the posterior cingulate and the parahippocampal gyrus. We found no differences in subjective arousal ratings between the two threatening conditions. On the valence scale though, subjects rated modern-threatening pictures significantly more negative than evolutionary-threatening pictures, indicating a higher level of perceived threat. The majority of previous studies show a positive relationship between arousal rating and amygdala activity. However, comparing fMRI results with behavioral findings we provide evidence that neural activity in fear processing areas is not only driven by arousal or valence, but presumably also by the evolutionary content of the stimulus. This has also fundamental methodological implications, in the sense to suggest a more elaborate classification of stimulus content to improve the validity of experimental designs.

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Preschool-Onset Major Depressive Disorder is Characterized by Electrocortical Deficits in Processing Pleasant Emotional Pictures.

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