Event-Related Potentials to Changes in Sound Intensity Demonstrate Alterations in Brain Function Related to Depression and Aging

Abstract

Measures of the brain's automatic electrophysiological responses to sounds represent a potential tool for identifying age-and depression-related neural markers. However, these markers have rarely been studied related to aging and depression within one study. Here, we investigated auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain that may show different alterations related to aging and depression. We used an oddball condition employing changes in sound intensity to investigate: (i) sound intensity dependence; (ii) sensory gating; and (iii) change detection, all within a single paradigm. The ERPs of younger (18-40 years) and older (62-80 years) depressed female participants and age-matched non-depressed participants were measured. Intensity dependence was examined as the difference between N1 responses to repeated high-and low-intensity sounds, sensory gating as N1 responses to rare and repeated sounds, and change detection as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN). We found that intensity dependence was greater in older participants than younger ones, indicating effects related to aging but not to depression. For sensory gating, we found depression-and age-related alterations as increased N1 responses. No group differences were found for MMN. Although a sensory gating deficit was expected in older adults, this study is the first to demonstrate age-related overexcitability in sound intensity dependency. The results indicate that automatic brain responses to sound intensity changes are suitable for studying age-and depression-related neural markers but may not be sensitive enough to differentiate the effects of aging and depression.

Somatosensory Deviance Detection ERPs and Their Relationship to Analogous Auditory ERPs and Interoceptive Accuracy

“…Hence, in the somatosensory experiments, both locations and both intensities were applied, and in the auditory experiment, both intensities were applied as standard and deviant stimuli for all participants in a randomized order across participants. In the somatosensory intensity deviance and location deviance experiments, there were 1680 stimuli in total (deviant stimulus probability 14% as in our previous study: Strömmer et al, 2017), and in the auditory experiment, there were 2,000 stimuli in total (deviant stimulus probability 10% as in our previous study: Ruohonen et al, 2020).…”

“…In the auditory experiment, SOA was randomly set at either 530 ms, 580 ms, or 630 ms. The SOAs were selected based on our previous studies reporting on somatosensory MMR and/or P3a (Strömmer et al, 2014; Strömmer et al, 2017) and auditory MMN (Ruohonen et al, 2020). In the somatosensory and auditory experiments, the stimulus presentation was controlled using E-Prime 2.0 software (Psychology Software Tools Inc., Sharpsburg, MD, USA).…”

“…The channels and time windows for sMMR and aMMN were defined based on previous literature (Strömmer et al, 2017;Ruohonen et al, 2020) For the sP3a and aP3a, the time windows applied in previous studies (sP3a : Strömmer et al, 2017;Shen, Smyk, et al, 2018, andaP3a: Chien et al, 2018;Light et al, 2007;Kiang et al, 2009;Hermens et al, 2010;Kaur et al, 2011;Chen et al, 2015) fitted to our data. Based on the previous literature and visual inspection of the maximum amplitude values of the grand averaged data, we selected a time window of 200-300 ms after stimulus onset for sP3a and 220−320 ms after stimulus onset for aP3a.…”

Interaction of Background Noise and Auditory Hallucinations on Phonemic Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and P3a Processing in Schizophrenia

“…Previous work has reported MMN amplitude reductions were most prominent in patients with SZ when compared to individuals with bipolar disorder (36,37). Previous studies measuring MMN alterations in major psychiatric disorders (e.g., depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder) have found similar findings, suggesting the decreased amplitude in MMN may be specific to the SZ population (38)(39)(40)(41).…”

The Mediating Effects of Coping Style on the Effects of Breath Count Mindfulness Training on Depressive Symptoms among International Students in China

“…A dysphoric mood is maintained through attention and memory functions biased toward negative information, and these cognitive biases also expose individuals to recurrent depression; Xu et al [ 55 ] indicate that there is a negative bias in automatic visual deviance detection. Ruohonen et al [ 56 ] investigated age- and depression-related alterations in the ERPs to sound intensity changes; depression-related effects were found for sensory gating when controlling for medication status or when only nonmedicated depressed participants were included in the analysis. In the depression group, general overexcitability in the processing of sounds was only observed in nonmedicated participants, so the results highlight the importance of studying nonmedicated groups when searching for biomarkers for depression.…”