Laureate Institute for Brain Research,Tulsa, OK,USA.
Janssen Research and Development, LLC, of Johnson & Johnson, Inc.,New Brunswick, NJ,USA.
Psychol Med. 2017 Nov;47(15):2640-2652. doi: 10.1017/S003329171700112X. Epub 2017 Apr 27.
Females are more likely than males to develop major depressive disorder (MDD). The current study used fMRI to compare the neural correlates of autobiographical memory (AM) recall between males and females diagnosed with MDD. AM overgenerality is a persistent cognitive deficit in MDD, the magnitude of which is correlated with depressive severity only in females. Delineating the neurobiological correlates of this deficit may elucidate the nature of sex-differences in the diathesis for developing MDD.
Participants included unmedicated males and females diagnosed with MDD (n = 20/group), and an age and sex matched healthy control group. AM recall in response to positive, negative, and neutral cue words was compared with a semantic memory task.
The behavioral properties of AMs did not differ between MDD males and females. In contrast, main effects of sex on cerebral hemodynamic activity were observed in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus during recall of positive specific memories, and middle prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and precuneus during recall of negative specific memories. Moreover, main effects of diagnosis on regional hemodynamic activity were observed in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and mPFC during positive specific memory recall, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during negative specific memory recall. Sex × diagnosis interactions were evident in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, caudate, and precuneus during positive memory recall, and in the posterior cingulate cortex, insula, precuneus and thalamus during negative specific memory recall.
The differential hemodynamic changes conceivably may reflect sex-specific cognitive strategies during recall of AMs irrespective of the phenomenological properties of those memories.
女性比男性更容易患上重度抑郁症（MDD）。本研究使用 fMRI 比较了患有 MDD 的男性和女性的自传体记忆（AM）回忆的神经相关性。AM 过度概括是 MDD 中持续存在的认知缺陷，其严重程度仅与女性的抑郁严重程度相关。阐明这种缺陷的神经生物学相关性可能阐明 MDD 易感性的性别差异的本质。
参与者包括未经治疗的男性和女性 MDD 患者（每组 20 人），以及年龄和性别匹配的健康对照组。比较了对正性、负性和中性提示词的 AM 回忆与语义记忆任务。
MDD 男性和女性之间 AM 的行为特性没有差异。相反，在回忆正性特定记忆时，大脑血液动力学活动存在性别主效应，而在回忆负性特定记忆时，大脑血液动力学活动存在性别主效应，分别位于左背外侧前额叶皮层和海马旁回、中前额叶皮层（mPFC）和楔前叶。此外，在回忆正性特定记忆时，左腹外侧前额叶皮层和 mPFC 以及在回忆负性特定记忆时，背侧前扣带皮层存在诊断主效应。在回忆正性记忆时，在背内侧前额叶皮层、尾状核和楔前叶，以及在回忆负性特定记忆时，在后扣带皮层、岛叶、楔前叶和丘脑观察到性别×诊断的交互作用。
这些差异的血液动力学变化可能反映了在回忆 AM 时的性别特异性认知策略，而与这些记忆的现象学特征无关。
