Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e44412. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044412. Epub 2012 Sep 11.
People who have remitted from depression are at increased risk for relapse if they rate their relatives as being critical of them on a simple self-report measure of Perceived Criticism (PC). To explore neural mechanisms associated with this we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how people with different levels of PC responded to hearing criticism from their own mothers. To maximize variability in affective reactivity, depressed, recovered depressed, and healthy control participants (n = 33) were classified as high or low in PC based on a median split. They were then exposed to personally-relevant critical and praising comments from their mothers. Perceived Criticism levels were unrelated to depression status and to negative mood change after hearing criticism. However, compared to low PC participants, those who scored high on PC showed differential activation in a network of regions associated with emotion reactivity and regulation, including increased amygdala activity and decreased reactions in prefrontal regulatory regions when they heard criticism. This was not the case for praise. Criticism may be a risk factor for relapse because it helps to "train" pathways characteristic of depressive information processing. The Perceived Criticism measure may help identify people who are more susceptible to this vulnerability.
从抑郁症中康复的人，如果他们在感知批评（PC）的简单自我报告测量中对亲属的批评程度评分较高，那么他们复发的风险就会增加。为了探索与这一现象相关的神经机制，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究不同 PC 水平的人对来自自己母亲的批评的反应。为了最大限度地增加情感反应的可变性，根据中位数分割，将抑郁、已康复的抑郁和健康对照组参与者（n=33）分为高或低 PC 组。然后，他们会听到来自母亲的个人相关的批评和表扬评论。感知批评水平与抑郁状态和听到批评后的负面情绪变化无关。然而，与低 PC 参与者相比，那些 PC 评分高的人在与情绪反应和调节相关的区域网络中表现出不同的激活，包括在听到批评时杏仁核活动增加和前额叶调节区域反应减少。表扬则不是这样。批评可能是复发的一个风险因素，因为它有助于“训练”与抑郁信息处理相关的特定通路。感知批评量表可能有助于识别更易受这种脆弱性影响的人。
