Weniger Godehard, Lange Claudia, Irle Eva
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Göttingen, Von-Siebold-Str. 5, D-37075 Göttingen, FRG, Germany.
J Affect Disord. 2006 Aug;94(1-3):219-29. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2006.04.017. Epub 2006 Jun 5.
Amygdala and hippocampus show significant structural abnormalities in major depressive disorder (MDD). Individuals with MDD have difficulties in emotional memory. A relationship between emotional memory deficits and structural abnormalities of amygdala and hippocampus in MDD has been proposed but not shown, yet.
The current study assessed memory for emotional faces in 21 young women with recent-onset MDD and 23 matched control subjects. All subjects underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (3D-MRI) and a clinical and neuropsychological assessment.
Depressive subjects had significantly enlarged amygdala size and significantly reduced hippocampal size compared with controls. Depressive subjects were significantly impaired in learning emotional facial expressions, with deficits being most pronounced for fearful, surprised and disgusted faces. Depressive subjects with amygdala volumes 1 SD or more above the mean of control subjects showed the strongest impairments. Correlation analyses revealed that larger left amygdala volumes were significantly related to worse memory performance and to higher anxiety scores of depressive subjects. Smaller left hippocampal volumes of depressive subjects were related to higher anxiety scores as well.
All MDD subjects were taking antidepressant medication at the time of the study. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify whether the behavioral and/or volumetric abnormalities of MDD subjects can be attributed to medication or MDD or both.
It might be speculated that amygdala enlargement in young MDD subjects is correlated with amygdalar over-activation and resolves with antidepressant treatment, as was shown for amygdalar over-activation.
在重度抑郁症（MDD）中，杏仁核和海马体显示出明显的结构异常。患有MDD的个体在情绪记忆方面存在困难。虽然有人提出MDD中情绪记忆缺陷与杏仁核和海马体结构异常之间存在关联，但尚未得到证实。
本研究评估了21名近期发病的年轻女性MDD患者和23名匹配的对照受试者对情绪面孔的记忆。所有受试者均接受了结构磁共振成像（3D-MRI）以及临床和神经心理学评估。
与对照组相比，抑郁受试者的杏仁核体积显著增大，海马体体积显著减小。抑郁受试者在学习情绪面部表情方面明显受损，对恐惧、惊讶和厌恶面孔的缺陷最为明显。杏仁核体积比对照受试者平均水平高出1个标准差或更多的抑郁受试者表现出最强的损伤。相关性分析显示，左侧杏仁核体积越大，抑郁受试者的记忆表现越差，焦虑得分越高。抑郁受试者左侧海马体体积越小，焦虑得分也越高。
所有MDD受试者在研究时都在服用抗抑郁药物。需要进行纵向研究以阐明MDD受试者的行为和/或体积异常是否可归因于药物、MDD或两者。
可以推测，年轻MDD受试者的杏仁核增大与杏仁核过度激活相关，并随着抗抑郁治疗而消退，正如杏仁核过度激活的情况所示。
