From motivation, decision-making to action: An fMRI study on suicidal behavior in patients with major depressive disorder

Potential structural trait markers of depression in the form of alterations in the structures of subcortical nuclei and structural covariance network properties

“…Furthermore, taken as a whole, the basal ganglia has a critical importance in the learning process. Previous studies showed that the basal ganglia were essential to “shifting to” a new set of rules and strengthen those new rules, while shifting from a new set of rules and learning new behavior-guiding rules were responsible for the frontal cortex ( Ji et al, 2021 , Owen et al, 1993 , Wise and Rompre, 1989 , Wise et al, 1996 ). Studies of cortical structure have reported decreased cortical thickness (or gyrification) of frontal cortex in depressed patients, representing trait markers ( Xiong et al, 2019 ).…”

Highlighting psychological pain avoidance and decision‐making bias as key predictors of suicide attempt in major depressive disorder—A novel investigative approach using machine learning

“…Our findings show that this approach is promising for the development of a prediction tool for use at the level of the individual, which could help guide targeted clinical and prevention efforts. Our previous work has shown that functional and structural brain deficits are pervasive in patients with MDD (Ji et al, 2021; Ming et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2016; Xiong et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2016). Further research is needed to explore more comprehensively mechanisms of suicidal behavior and to incorporate biological or psychological features that will enable the construction of a more precise classification model.…”

Decision‐making biases in suicide attempters with major depressive disorder: A computational modeling study using the balloon analog risk task (BART)

“…Finally, the Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain theory proposed by Li and colleagues, based on the Psychological Pain theory (Shneidman, 1993), separates psychological pain into three dimensions-painful feelings, pain arousal and pain avoidance, to measure the experience, cognitive and motivation aspects of psychological pain (Li et al, 2014). Related research has found that psychological painful feelings and pain arousal were both related to suicidal ideation, while psychological pain avoidance was related to suicidal behavior (Ji et al, 2021(Ji et al, , 2022.…”

“…Informed by these theories, a number of recent studies have focused on the process of suicide decision making, and found that after the generation of suicidal ideation, individuals often need to make repeated decisions on whether to carry out suicide (Bryan et al, 2020; Ji et al, 2021, 2022). The researchers and others have proposed that there are distinct MDD‐associated and suicidality‐associated decision‐making processes, such that there may exist unique decision biases associated with the ultimate production of suicidal behaviour, and constitute as risk factors for suicide (Ackerman et al, 2015; Gifuni et al, 2020; Perrain et al, 2021).…”

“…Loss aversion means that given possible gains and possible losses of similar magnitude, people will assign greater weight to possible losses, thus exhibiting a bias towards loss avoidance (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). Recently, the studies on loss aversion in people with a history of suicide attempt (SA) have not yielded consistent results, with some studies suggesting that they exhibit higher loss aversion than those without SA history (Baek et al, 2017; Ji et al, 2021), and some suggesting the opposite (Alacreu‐Crespo et al, 2020; Hadlaczky et al, 2018). While these differences may be related to different definitions of loss, research populations or approaches, the common focus is the importance of exploring decision preferences in the face of possible losses.…”