Recruitment of the left hemispheric emotional attention neural network in risk for and protection from depression

Abstract

IntroductionIndividuals with a first-degree relative who has major depressive disorder (MDD) are at a 2-to 3-fold greater risk for depression than those without a family history of MDD. 1 Rela tives of depressed patients, compared with individuals without family history of psychiatric disorders, are characterized by elevated neuroticism, depressive cognitions and rigidity 2 and by stability of these traits over time.3 Patients with MDD who had relatives with an affective disorder display greater neuroticism 4 and have an earlier age of onset of MDD. 5 Evidently, family history of MDD alters susceptibility to depression and to an acute MDD episode. The factor is clinically important since it involves mechanisms of elevated risk for MDD (relatives of patients with MDD compared with healthy controls), suggests relative resilience to the disease (relatives of patients with MDD compared with the patients themselves) and points to different endophenotypes of healthy controls and patients with MDD. A good understanding of these mechanisms should not be underestimated if diagnosis, therapy and prevention of the disorder are to be enhanced. Background: Family history of major depressive disorder (MDD) increases individuals' vulnerability to depression and alters the way depression manifests itself. Emotion processing and attention shifting are functions altered by MDD and family history of the disease; therefore, it is important to recognize the neural correlates of these functions in association with both factors. Methods: Our study determines neural correlates of emotion processing and attention shifting for healthy individuals and patients with MDD with and without family history of depression. We compared the performance and neural activity in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment examining emotion processing and attention shifting in all participants. Results: Our sample included 4 study groups: healthy controls without family history of depression (n = 25), patients with MDD without family history of the disease (n = 20), unaffected healthy first-degree relatives of patients with MDD (n = 21) and patients with MDD with family history of MDD (n = 30). Compared with healthy controls, unaffected first-degree relatives overactivate the somatosensory cortex and the attention controlling areas during both emotion processing and attention shifting. Patients with family history of MDD have stronger neural activation in subcortical areas during shifting attention from negative stimuli. Patients without family history of MDD have less activation in the paralimbic regions and more activation in core limbic areas, especially during emotion processing. Limitations: The conclusions about the intergroup differences in activation can be drawn only about neural areas engaged in the task. Conclusion: Unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with MDD overreact to external emotional cues and compensate for the vulnerability with increased involvement of executive control. Patients with a family history of MDD have le...

Prefrontal brain responsiveness to negative stimuli

“…In contrast, altered signalling in the supramarginal gyrus in familial risk for MDD as observed in our PPI analyses matches a previous report on functional alterations in familial risk 12 and might again point to altered executive functioning in individuals at risk for MDD, whereas the relevance of enhanced task-specific coupling between the OFC and the occipital cortex remains uncertain so far owing to lacking corresponding evidence from the literature. In a more general sense, the present results highlight the urgent need for a more detailed understanding of aberrant network signalling in MDD.…”

“…Out of the few studies available, DLPFC hypoactivation was reported in individuals at familial risk during presentation of fearful faces, 8 highly matching the present results, but also during an automatic mood regulation paradigm. 38 Moreover, Lisiecka and colleagues 12 showed aberrant functioning in further brain areas thought to be of high relevance for execu tive control during emotional processing, including the inferior parietal gyrus and the postcentral gyrus in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with MDD.…”

“…One of the few functional MRI (fMRI) studies including both patients and healthy individuals stratified for familial risk status pointed to aberrant executive control functioning during emotional processing in unaffected firstdegree relatives of patients with MDD. 12 It remains unclear in which neuronal networks functional alterations in individuals at familial risk for MDD might be present and to what degree they might resemble aberrant neural signalling in acute MDD. Hence, with this study we aimed to compare alterations in the 2 most commonly reported MDD-related neuronal circuits in familial risk and in acute disorder.…”

Structural and functional imaging of the hippocampus in young people at familial risk of depression

“…However, people at familial risk of depression do overactivate subcortical, affectlinked, areas in a task requiring the shifting of attention from negative stimuli. This has been attributed to a compensatory 'protective' strategy in at-risk individuals (Lisiecka et al 2013), and it is possible that a similar effect could underlie the changes seen in our study.…”

Development of combined back propagation algorithm and radial basis function for diagnosing depression patients

“…Such a system could assist the doctors to take decisions in much-needed situations. Danuta [10], stated that family history of MDD increases individuals' vulnerability to depression and alters the way depression manifests itself. Emotion processing and attention shifting are functions altered by MDD and family history of the disease; therefore, it was important to recognize the neural correlates of these functions in association with both factors.…”