Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mood disorder that is not traditionally considered to affect the visual system. However, recent findings have reported decreased cortical levels of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA in occipital cortex. To explore possible functional consequences of MDD on visual processing, we applied a psychophysical visual motion processing task in which healthy young adults typically exhibit impaired perceptual discrimination of large high-contrast stimuli. It has been suggested that this phenomenon, spatial suppression, is mediated by GABAergic center-surround antagonism in visual pathways. Based on previous findings linking MDD to occipital GABA dysfunction, we hypothesized that MDD patients would exhibit decreased spatial suppression, leading to the counterintuitive hypothesis of better psychophysical performance. Indeed, motion perception for typically suppressed stimuli was enhanced in patients with MDD compared with age-matched controls. Furthermore, the degree of spatial suppression correlated with an individual's illness load; patients with greater lifetime duration of depression exhibited the least spatial suppression and performed the best in the high-contrast motion discrimination task. Notably, this decrease in spatial suppression persisted beyond recovery and without the confound of acute illness or treatment; all patients had been clinically recovered and unmedicated for several months at the time of testing, suggesting that depression has ubiquitous consequences that may persist long after mood symptoms have receded. This finding raises the possibility that spatial suppression may represent a sensitive endophenotypic marker of trait vulnerability in MDD.

Background Modulation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), specifically α4β2 subunit containing nAChRs, may be effective in the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Using [123I] 5-I-A-85380 single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), we studied β2 subunit containing nAChR (β2*-nAChR) availability in patients with MDD. In order to understand the molecular basis of the change in receptor availability, we also studied β2*-nAChR binding in postmortem samples of human brains of MDD subjects. Methods 23 medication-free, early-onset, non-smoking subjects with familial MDD (8 acutely depressed (aMDD), 15 euthymic, recovered MDD subjects (rMDD)), and 23 age- and gender-matched, non-smoking controls had one [123I] 5-I-A-85380 SPECT scan and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. β2*-nAChR availability was quantified as VT/fP. β2*-nAChR binding was analyzed in postmortem samples of the prefrontal cortex in 14 subjects with MDD and age-matched controls with [125I] 5-I-A-85380. Results β2*-nAChR availability in aMDD and rMDD subjects was significantly lower across all brain regions than in respective controls and lower in aMDD subjects than in rMDD subjects. MDD patients showed significant correlations between β2*-nAChR availability and lifetime number of depressive episodes, trauma and anxiety scores. There were no differences in β2*-nAChR number between groups in the human postmortem study. Conclusion β2*-nAChR availability is decreased in patients with MDD. The difference between β2*-nAChR availability in vivo and in postmortem samples may be analogous to data with dopaminergic PET ligands and dopamine receptor availability; lower receptor availability for the SPECT ligand could be caused by increased endogenous acetylcholine.

Remitted depressed patients may continue to exhibit attentional biases toward negative emotional information, reflected by greater recruitment of prefrontal regions implicated in attentional control in the context of negative emotional information.

Increasing evidence suggests that abnormalities in amino neurotransmission are associated with the neurobiology of depression. Preclinical studies demonstrate that GABA modulating agents are active in commonly used rodent behavioral models of antidepressant activity, and that chronic administration of antidepressant drugs induces marked changes in GABAergic function. In humans, depressed patients have lower plasma, CSF and brain GABA concentrations than non-depressed comparison subjects. The recent discovery that several anticonvulsant and GABA-mimetic agents possess mood stabilizing and antidepressant properties has further increased interest in these findings. This review outlines the existing literature investigating the possible involvement of GABA in the neurobiology of depression and briefly highlights how this information may afford new targets for antidepressant drug development.

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