Functional connectivity of reflective and brooding rumination in depressed and healthy women

Abstract

Ruminative thinking is related to an increased risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) and perpetuates negative mood states. Rumination, uncontrollable negative thoughts about the self, may comprise both reflective and brooding components. However, only brooding rumination is consistently associated with increased negativity bias and negative coping styles, while reflective rumination has a less clear relationship with negative outcomes in healthy and depressed participants. The current study examined seed-to-voxel (S2.V) resting-state functional connectivity (FC) in a sample of healthy (HC) and depressed (MDD) adult women (HC: n=50, MDD: n=33). The S2V FC of six key brain regions, including the left and right amygdala, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex (ACC, PCC), and medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (mPFC, dlPFC), was correlated with self-reported reflective and brooding rumination. Results indicate that HC and MDD participants had increased brooding rumination associated with decreased FC between the left amygdala and the right temporal pole. Moreover, reflective rumination was associated with distinct FC of the mPFC, PCC, and ACC with parietal, occipital, and cingulate regions. Depressed participants, compared with HC, exhibited decreased FC between the PCC and a region in the right middle frontal gyrus. The results of the current study add to the understanding of the neural underpinnings of different forms of self-related cognition-brooding and reflective rumination-in healthy and depressed women.

Connectome-wide search for functional connectivity locus associated with pathological rumination as a target for real-time fMRI neurofeedback intervention

“…Alterations in FC associated with rumination have also been indicated for MPFC seed connectivity. Increased resting-state FC between the MPFC seed and the PCC was correlated with reflective rumination for female participants with major depressive disorder (MDD) (Satyshur et al, 2018). This result is partly consistent with the present result that found the association between reflective RRS and the MPFC connectivity (Fig.…”

“…While depressive and brooding components, rather than reflective component of RRS have been associated with the pathological effect of rumination (Watkins and Teasdale, 2004), the current data indicated that MA participants had significantly high reflective RRS as well as depressive and brooding RRS. High RRS in both reflective and brooding components was also observed in another study (Satyshur et al, 2018). This observation was consistent with the study indicating that brooding and reflective rumination were not separate factors in depressed patients because these components could exacerbate each other in depression (Whitmer and Gotlib, 2011).…”

“…Neurobiologically, cortical midline structures (Nejad et al, 2013;Northoff and Bermpohl, 2004) involved in the default mode network (DMN) have been implicated in rumination and associated self-referential thinking (Burkhouse et al, 2017;Hamilton et al, 2015;Hamilton et al, 2011;Jiang et al, 2017;Johnson et al, 2009;Lois and Wessa, 2016;Murray et al, 2015;Nejad et al, 2013;Satyshur et al, 2018;Zhu et al, 2012;Zhu et al, 2017).…”

Retrosplenial Cortical Connectivity with Frontal Basal Ganglia Networks

“…Therefore, one possibility is that the RSC is involved in attentional shifting in rodents as a function of its striatal territory. As a hub of the DMN, RSC in humans is known to be impaired in various psychiatric and neurological disorders (Doucet et al, 2020;He et al, 2018;Satyshur, Layden, Gowins, Buchanan, & Gollan, 2018;Martino et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2016;Baker et al, 2014;Cowdrey, Filippini, Park, Smith, & McCabe, 2014;Hafkemeijer, van der Grond, & Rombouts, 2012;Anderson et al, 2011;Bluhm et al, 2009). Understanding the biology of the DMN will require a detailed, translational explication of the functional roles of the RSC, not just in navigation and memory, but also in decision making.…”

Involuntary memories after stressor exposure: contribution of hormonal status and rumination in women.

“…In addition, brooding and reflective rumination are associated with different functional connectivity patterns in healthy and depressed women at rest (Satyshur, Layden, Gowins, Buchanan, & Gollan, 2018). Brooding rumination has been associated with increased connectivity between the posterior and subgenual cingulate cortex at rest, before and after controlling for depressive symptoms (Berman et al, 2011) as well as decreased functional connectivity between the left amygdala and right temporal pole (Satyshur et al, 2018). This pattern of connectivity further illustrates the role brooding rumination may play in enhanced amygdala activation leading to enhanced memory modulation following stressor exposure.…”