Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2012 Feb;121(1):61-72. doi: 10.1037/a0025294. Epub 2011 Sep 5.
Daughters of depressed mothers are at significantly elevated risk for developing a depressive disorder themselves. We have little understanding, however, of the specific factors that contribute to this risk. The ability to regulate negative affect effectively is critical to emotional and physical health and may play an important role in influencing risk for depression. We examined whether never-disordered daughters whose mothers have experienced recurrent episodes of depression during their daughters' lifetime differ from never-disordered daughters of never-disordered mothers in their patterns of neural activation during a negative mood induction and during automatic mood regulation. Sad mood was induced in daughters through the use of film clips; daughters then recalled positive autobiographical memories, a procedure shown previously to repair negative affect. During the mood induction, high-risk girls exhibited greater activation than did low-risk daughters in brain areas that have frequently been implicated in the experience of negative affect, including the amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, during automatic mood regulation, low-risk daughters exhibited greater activation than did their high-risk counterparts in brain areas that have frequently been associated with top-down regulation of emotion, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These findings indicate that girls at high and low risk for depression differ in their patterns of neural activation both while experiencing, and while repairing negative affect, and suggest that anomalies in neural functioning precede the onset of a depressive episode.
患有抑郁症的母亲的女儿自身发展出抑郁症的风险显著增加。然而，我们对导致这种风险的具体因素知之甚少。有效调节负面情绪对身心健康至关重要，可能对影响抑郁风险起着重要作用。我们研究了从未出现过障碍的女儿，如果她们的母亲在女儿的一生中经历过多次抑郁发作，那么她们在消极情绪诱发期间和自动情绪调节期间的神经激活模式是否与从未出现过障碍的母亲的女儿不同。通过使用电影片段使女儿们产生悲伤情绪；然后，女儿们回忆积极的自传体记忆，这一程序以前被证明可以修复负面情绪。在情绪诱发期间，高风险女孩的大脑区域激活程度高于低风险女儿，这些大脑区域经常与体验负面情绪有关，包括杏仁核和腹外侧前额叶皮层。相比之下，在自动情绪调节期间，低风险女儿的大脑区域激活程度高于高风险女儿，这些大脑区域经常与情绪的自上而下调节有关，包括背外侧前额叶皮层和背侧前扣带皮层。这些发现表明，高风险和低风险的抑郁女孩在经历和修复负面情绪时的神经激活模式存在差异，这表明神经功能异常先于抑郁发作的发生。
