Evidence for attention to threatening stimuli in depression

Mathews, Andrew; Ridgeway, Valerie; Williamson, Donald A.

doi:10.1016/0005-7967(96)00046-0

Cited by 211 publications

(151 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…For example, group comparisons for threat-related words indicate that depressed subjects can, in fact, demonstrate significantly greater activation then do controls, consistent with their elevated anxiety scores and with cognitive studies in which depressed individuals exhibited heightened attention for threat-related words [3]. One limitation of the present study is that a subset of seven patients received medication at the time they were scanned.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

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Brain activation to emotional words in depressed vs healthy subjects

et al. 2004

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Depression involves either enhanced processing of negative stimuli or diminished processing of positive stimuli. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess brain activation in depressed vs healthy participants. Fifteen participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 15 controls were scanned during a lexical decision task involving neutral, happy, sad, and threat-related words. For happy words, depressed subjects exhibited less activation than did controls to happy words in fronto-temporal and limbic regions. For sad words, depressed subjects showed more activation than did controls in the inferior parietal lobule and less activation in the superior temporal gyrus and cerebellum, suggesting a complex activation pattern that varies for neural sub-circuits that may be associated with di¡erent cognitive or behavioral processes. INTRODUCTIONCognitive theories of depression have focused primarily on enhanced processing of negative stimuli as an explanation for the etiology and maintenance of depression [1,2]. Consistent with these formulations, depressed subjects have been found to exhibit faster responses to negative stimuli than they do to neutral or positive stimuli [3,4]. A different conceptualization of depression focuses on the absence of positive affect [5]. Consistent with this perspective, studies of depressed individuals have documented significantly diminished responsiveness to positive (but not negative) stimuli [6,7].Taken together, depression appears to be associated with increased processing of negative stimuli and/or diminished processing of positive stimuli. We used fMRI and a lexical decision task to address the question of whether these response biases are related to differential activation patterns between depressed and healthy control subjects. We predicted that, relative to normal controls, depressed participants would exhibit increased activation to sad (relative to neutral) words and/or decreased activation to happy (relative to neutral) words in brain regions associated with affective reactivity, attention, or single-word processing, such as the amygdala, insula, parietal lobules, and frontal and temporal cortical regions. SUBJECTS AND METHODSSubjects: Fifteen individuals with diagnosed major depressive disorder (MDD: 12 females, mean age 35.1 years) and 15 non-depressed control (12 females, mean age 30.7 years) subjects with no psychiatric history participated in this study. Seven of the depressed participants were taking antidepressant medications (two were taking tricyclic antidepressants, one was taking tricyclic and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants, and four were taking other types of antidepressants). There was no significant age difference between the groups. All participants were between the ages of 18 and 60, had no reported history of brain injury, lifetime history of primary psychotic ideations, social phobia, panic disorder or mania, no reported substance abuse within the past 6 months, no behavioral indications of possible impa...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Consistent with these formulations, depressed subjects have been found to exhibit faster responses to negative stimuli than they do to neutral or positive stimuli [3,4]. A different conceptualization of depression focuses on the absence of positive affect [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Brain activation to emotional words in depressed vs healthy subjects

et al. 2004

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“…Compared with healthy individuals, patients suffering from depression, phobias, anxiety disorders and panic disorders show an attentional bias towards negative stimuli compared with positive or neutral stimuli (Mathews, Ridgeway & Williamson 1996;Bradley, Mogg & Lee 1997;Spector, Pecknold & Libman 2003;Lang & Sarmiento 2004). A similar attentional bias has been noted among alcoholics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

IMAGING STUDY: Modulation of brain response to emotional images by alcohol cues in alcohol‐dependent patients

2008

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Alcohol is often used to modulate mood states. Alcohol drinkers report that they use alcohol both to enhance positive affect and to reduce dysphoria, and alcohol-dependent patients specifically state reduction of negative affect as a primary reason for drinking. The current study proposes that alcohol cues may reduce negative affect in alcoholics. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activation in response to combination images that juxtaposed negative or positive International Affective Picture System (IAPS) images with an alcohol or non-alcoholcontaining beverage. We found that in the absence of the alcohol cue, alcoholics showed more activation to negative than to positive images and greater activation than controls to negative images. When the IAPS images were presented with the alcohol cue, there was a decreased difference in activation between the positive and negative images among the alcoholics, and a decreased difference in response to the negative images between controls and alcoholics. Additionally, in the neutral-beverage conditions, anxiety ratings significantly predicted activation in the right parahippocampal gyrus but did not predict activation when the alcohol cues were presented. In conclusion, the alcohol cues may have modulated cortical networks involved in the processing of emotional stimuli by eliciting a conditioned response in the alcoholics, but not in the controls, which may have decreased responsiveness to the negative images.

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“…Studies using the Dot-probe test have found attentional biases in depression using relatively long stimulus presentations [1 sec or more; Mogg et al, 1995]. When stimuli are presented for shorter durations, results are mixed [Bradley et al, 1997;Mathews et al, 1996]. Our stimulus presentation time of 500 msec was probably not optimal to detect group differences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Residual cognitive impairments in remitted depressed patients

2008

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Depressive disorders are associated with various cognitive impairments. Studies on whether or not these impairments persist into the euthymic phase have shown conflicting results, due to differences in test versions and in study samples. In this paper, we aimed to compare the cognitive performance of remitted depressed patients with that of age-and gender-matched healthy volunteers across a wide range of cognitive domains. In two studies, we found few differences on neutral as well as emotional information processing tests. The findings indicate that remitted depressed patients who use antidepressant medication still show an increased recognition of facial expression of fear compared to healthy controls. Patients also performed worse on a test of recognition of abstract visual information from long-term memory. No other residual cognitive impairments were found. These results indicate that most of the cognitive impairments associated with depression resolve with recovery through medication, even when recovery is incomplete. Considering the finding that remitted depressed patients have higher levels of cognitive reactivity, future studies may investigate the possibility that these cognitive impairments have not resolved but have become latent, and may therefore easily be triggered by small changes in mood state.

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Evidence for attention to threatening stimuli in depression

Cited by 211 publications

References 28 publications

Brain activation to emotional words in depressed vs healthy subjects

Brain activation to emotional words in depressed vs healthy subjects

IMAGING STUDY: Modulation of brain response to emotional images by alcohol cues in alcohol‐dependent patients

Residual cognitive impairments in remitted depressed patients

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