Daring to Feel: Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy Increases Amygdala Activation and Connectivity in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder—A Randomized Controlled Trial

Meyer, Kristina; Attar, Catherine Hindi; Fiebig, Jana; Stamm, Thomas; Bassett, Tyler R.; Bauer, Michael; Dannlowski, Udo; Ethofer, Thomas; Falkenberg, Irina; Jansen, Andreas; Juckel, Georg; Kircher, Tilo; Mulert, Christoph; Leicht, Gregor; Rau, Anne; Rauh, Jonas; Ritter, Dirk; Ritter, Philipp; Trost, Sarah; Vogelbacher, Christoph; Walter, Henrik; Wolter, Sarah; Hautzinger, Martin; Bermpohl, Felix

doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.02.008

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 50 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Ernst et al ( 121 ) pointed that a weak harm-avoidant system (amygdala) could contribute to depression. Meyer et al ( 122 ) discovered that amygdala activation was negatively associated with depressive symptoms. Lu et al ( 123 ) recorded the impaired connectivity of amygdala during facial emotional stimulus in depressive patients.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The conscious processing of emotion in depression disorder: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

Gou

Guo

et al. 2023

Front. Psychiatry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundDepression is generally accompanied by a disturbed conscious processing of emotion, which manifests as a negative bias to facial/voice emotion information and a decreased accuracy in emotion recognition tasks. Several studies have proved that abnormal brain activation was responsible for the deficit function of conscious emotion recognition in depression. However, the altered brain activation related to the conscious processing of emotion in depression was incongruent among studies. Therefore, we conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis to better understand the underlying neurophysiological mechanism of conscious processing of emotion in depression.MethodElectronic databases were searched using the search terms “depression,” “emotion recognition,” and “neuroimaging” from inceptions to April 10th, 2023. We retrieved trials which explored the neuro-responses of depressive patients to explicit emotion recognition tasks. Two investigators independently performed literature selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment. The spatial consistency of brain activation in conscious facial expressions recognition was calculated using ALE. The robustness of the results was examined by Jackknife sensitivity analysis.ResultsWe retrieved 11,365 articles in total, 28 of which were included. In the overall analysis, we found increased activity in the middle temporal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and cuneus, and decreased activity in the superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, insula, and superior frontal gyrus. In response to positive stimuli, depressive patients showed hyperactivity in the medial frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and insula (uncorrected p < 0.001). When receiving negative stimuli, a higher activation was found in the precentral gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, precuneus, and superior temporal gyrus (uncorrected p < 0.001).ConclusionAmong depressive patients, a broad spectrum of brain areas was involved in a deficit of conscious emotion processing. The activation of brain regions was different in response to positive or negative stimuli. Due to potential clinical heterogeneity, the findings should be treated with caution.Systematic review registrationhttps://inplasy.com/inplasy-2022-11-0057/, identifier: 2022110057.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%