Discipline of Psychiatry, School of Medicine & Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Integrated Neuroimaging, Trinity Academic Medical Centre, The Adelaide and Meath Hospital incorporating the National Children's Hospital, & St James's Hospital, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
J Affect Disord. 2011 Nov;134(1-3):272-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2011.06.021. Epub 2011 Jul 14.
The aim of the study is to map a neural network of emotion processing and to identify differences in major depression compared to healthy controls. It is hypothesized that intentional perception of emotional faces activates connections between amygdala (Demir et al.), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) and that frontal-amygdala connections are altered in major depressive disorder (MDD).
Fifteen medication-free patients with MDD and fifteen healthy controls were enrolled. All subjects were assessed using the same face-matching functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) task, known to involve those areas. Brain activations were obtained using Statistical Parametric Mapping version 5 (SPM5) for data analysis and MARSBAR for extracting of fMRI time series. Then data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).
A valid model was established for the left and the right hemispheres showing a circuit involving ACC, OFC, PFC and AMY. The left hemisphere shows significant lower connectivity strengths in patients than controls, for the pathway that goes from AMY to the OF11, and a trend of higher connectivity in patients for the path that goes from the PF9 to the OF11. In the right hemisphere, patients show lower connectivity coefficients in the paths from the AMY to OF11, from the AMY to ACC, and from the ACC to PF9. By the contrary, controls show lower connectivity strengths for the path that goes from ACC to AMY.
Functional disconnection between limbic and frontal brain regions could be demonstrated using structural equation modeling. The interpretation of these findings could be that there is an emotional processing bias with disconnection bilaterally between amygdala to orbitofrontal cortices and in addition a right disconnection between amygdala and ACC as well as between ACC and prefrontal cortex possibly in line with a more prominent role for the right hemisphere in emotion processing.
本研究旨在绘制情绪处理的神经网络图谱，并确定与健康对照组相比，重度抑郁症的差异。假设情绪面孔的有意感知会激活杏仁核（Demir 等人）、眶额皮层（OFC）、前扣带回皮层（ACC）和前额叶皮层（PFC）之间的连接，并且在重度抑郁症（MDD）中，额-杏仁核连接会发生改变。
纳入 15 名未服用药物的 MDD 患者和 15 名健康对照者。所有受试者均接受相同的面部匹配功能磁共振成像（fMRI）任务评估，该任务已知涉及这些区域。使用统计参数映射版本 5（SPM5）进行数据分析和 MARSBAR 提取 fMRI 时间序列获得脑激活。然后使用结构方程模型（SEM）分析数据。
为左右半球建立了有效的模型，显示了一个涉及 ACC、OFC、PFC 和 AMY 的回路。与对照组相比，患者左侧半球从 AMY 到 OF11 的路径的连接强度明显较低，而从 PF9 到 OF11 的路径的连接强度呈趋势性增加。在右半球，患者从 AMY 到 OF11、从 AMY 到 ACC 和从 ACC 到 PF9 的路径的连接系数较低。相反，对照组在从 ACC 到 AMY 的路径上表现出较低的连接强度。
使用结构方程模型可以证明边缘和额叶脑区之间的功能连接中断。这些发现的解释可能是双侧杏仁核到眶额皮层之间存在情绪处理偏向，以及杏仁核与 ACC 之间以及 ACC 与前额叶皮层之间存在右侧连接中断，这可能与右侧半球在情绪处理中发挥更重要的作用有关。
