Developmental changes in electroencephalographic frontal asymmetry in young children at risk for depression

Abstract

Background A number of studies have reported that depression is associated with lower relative left frontal activity in the alpha band (i.e., frontal asymmetry, or FA), as measured by electroencephalogram. FA has also been hypothesized to be a vulnerability marker for depression. If this is the case, FA should be evident in offspring of depressed mothers, a group at elevated risk for depression. However, the results of previous offspring studies have been inconsistent and none of these studies has considered whether the relationship between FA and risk changes over development in children. Method We assessed FA twice, at ages 3 and 6, in 253 never-depressed children from a community sample. Maternal history of depressive disorders was determined by a diagnostic interview completed by the mothers at the first assessment. Results There was a significant interaction between maternal depression and offspring age at assessment, indicating that FA exhibits different developmental trajectories depending on level of familial risk for depression. Offspring of depressed mothers exhibited a decreasing relative left FA over the course of early childhood, while offspring of non-depressed mothers exhibited relatively similar, symmetrical, levels of frontal alpha activity at both assessment points. Conclusions These results suggest that changes in FA from early to middle childhood distinguish those at risk for depression and that cross-sectional assessment of FA may have limited value in understanding risk. These results highlight the importance of considering development in understanding the role of FA in depression.

The Stony Brook Temperament Study: Early Antecedents and Pathways to Emotional Disorders

“…This suggests that children of depressed parents exhibit diminished neural reactivity to emotional stimuli regardless of valence, and is consistent with evidence that depression is associated with a general emotional disengagement with the environment (17). In addition, it supports findings (15) indicating that children of depressed mothers can be distinguished from their peers based on electrocortical activity as early as age 6.…”

“…In our study, young children of mothers with a history of depression exhibited the hypothesized frontal asymmetry. This was qualified by development in that it was not evident until children were 6 years old; as preschoolers, children of mothers with and without a history of depression did not differ (15). It is unclear whether these findings reflect developmental constraints on the expression of heritable risk or the cumulative effects of environmental influences.…”

Vulnerability to Depression in Youth: Advances From Affective Neuroscience

“…Developmental changes in neural systems involved in emotional processing may further inform understanding of vulnerability (53; 92), raising the need for additional longitudinal research. Further prospective work is also needed to evaluate whether potential vulnerabilities predict changes in symptoms into adolescence and adulthood, whether they mediate associations between early risk factors (e.g., parental depression) and later outcomes, and to identify factors moderate outcomes (e.g., peer relationships, life stress, puberty).…”

Depression symptom dimensions and asymmetrical frontal cortical activity while anticipating reward

“…While this investigation focused only on cross-sectional analyses, there is growing evidence that decreased relative left frontal cortical activity is a risk factor for the development of depression. Specifically, decreased relative left frontal cortical activity has been observed in the offspring of depressed individuals who have never experienced a depressed episode (Dawson, Frey, Panagiotides, Osterling, & Hessl, 1997;Goldstein et al, 2016;Tomarken, Dichter, Garber, & Simien, 2004), associated with genetic risk for depression (Bismark et al, 2010) and shown to prospectively predict increased depressive symptoms (P€ ossel, Lo, Fritz, & Seemann, 2008) and first-onset depression (Nusslock et al, 2011). In addition, a recent investigation found that decreased relative left frontal cortical activity interacted with stressful life events to predict increased internalizing symptoms in children at familial risk for depression (Lopez-Duran, Nusslock, George, & Kovacs, 2012).…”