Dysfunction of Emotion Regulation in Mild Cognitive Impairment Individuals Combined With Depressive Disorder: A Neural Mechanism Study

Abstract

Depression increases the risk of progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia, where impaired emotion regulation is a core symptom of depression. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the decreased emotion regulation in individuals with MCI combined with depressive symptoms are not precise. We assessed the behavioral performance by emotion regulation tasks and recorded event-related electroencephalography (EEG) signals related to emotion regulation tasks simultaneously. EEG analysis, including event-related potential (ERP), event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP), functional connectivity and graph theory, was used to compare the difference between MCI individuals and MCI depressed individuals in behavioral performance, the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, neural oscillations and brain networks during the processing of emotional stimuli. We found that MCI depressed individuals have negative preferences and are prone to allocate more attentional resources to negative stimuli. Results suggested that theta and alpha oscillations activity is increased, and gamma oscillations activity is decreased during negative stimulus processing in MCI depressed individuals, thus indicating that the decreased emotion regulation in MCI depressed individuals may be associated with enhanced low-frequency and decreased high-frequency oscillations activity. Functional connectivity analysis revealed a decrease in functional connectivity in the left cerebral hemisphere of the alpha band and an increase in functional connectivity in the right cerebral hemisphere of the alpha band in MCI depressed individuals. Graph theory analysis suggested that global network metrics, including clustering coefficients and disassortative, decreased, while nodal and modular network metrics regarding local nodal efficiency, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality were significantly increased in the frontal lobe and decreased in the parieto-occipital lobe, which was observed in the alpha band, further suggesting that abnormal alpha band network connectivity may be a potential marker of depressive symptoms. Correlational analyses showed that depressive symptoms were closely related to emotion regulation, power oscillations and functional connectivity. In conclusion, the dominant processing of negative stimuli, the increased low-frequency oscillations activity and decreased high-frequency activity, so as the decrease in top-down information processing in the frontal parieto-occipital lobe, results in the abnormality of alpha-band network connectivity. It is suggested that these factors, in turn, contribute to the declined ability of MCI depressed individuals in emotion regulation.

Correlations among peripheral blood markers, white matter hyperintensity, and cognitive function in patients with non-disabling ischemic cerebrovascular events

“…VCI group was defined as MOCA scores less than 24. When the critical score is 24, MoCA has good specificity and sensitivity, which is supported by many studies based on Chinese population (Tsai et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2022); therefore, patients with a total score of <24 were diagnosed with cognitive impairment (Pugh et al, 2018). All patients included in this study were acute ischemic stroke patients, and for the patients from cognitive impairment group, all of them had a Hachinski Ischemic Scale greater than 7, which is consistent with the criteria of VCI.…”

Emotional processing and positive affect after acute exercise in healthy older adults

“…Health‐related exclusion criteria generally helped to ensure a sample that could safely complete a bout of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic exercise. Exclusion of left‐handed individuals, mental health conditions, and cognitive impairment was particularly important in cutting potential sources of variation in emotional brain processing, as well (Brookshire & Casasanto, 2012; Bylsma et al, 2008; Costanzo et al, 2015; Li et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2022). Exclusion of individuals with probable obstructive sleep apnea was performed to exclude those with characteristically worsened sleep, since wrist actigraphy‐based sleep data were also analyzed for the present sample (Alfini et al, 2020).…”

Effect of emotional stimulus on response inhibition in people with mild cognitive impairment: an event-related potential study

“…Some studies have confirmed that emotion regulation is impaired in MCI ( Bora and Yener, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2022 ), mainly focusing on negative emotions and that the recognition of positive faces, such as joy, happiness, and hope, is no different from healthy older adults ( McCade et al, 2013 ; Elferink et al, 2015 ; Barbieri et al, 2022 ). This seems to suggest that MCI retains the “positive effect.” In addition, based on scholars’ proposal of the dual competition models, it is known that emotions and cognitions compete with each other, and the process largely depends on attentional capture ( Pessoa, 2009 ).…”