Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2017 Aug 30;266:35-41. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2017.05.012. Epub 2017 May 25.
Depression is common among adolescents, affecting greater than 12% of youth in a given year. Studies have shown aberrant amygdala connectivity in depressed adolescents, compared with controls; however, no studies have examined whether these abnormalities precede and heighten risk for depressive symptom expression. This study used resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) magnetic resonance imaging to examine neurobiological markers of escalating depression symptoms in adolescents (ages 12-16 years; free from psychopathology at baseline). Of a large sample of adolescents, 18 showed ≥ 1 S.D. increase in depression scale t-scores over time ("escalators"; time to escalation ranging from 6 to 54 months in follow up) and were matched and compared to 19 youth showing stable CDI scores over time ("controls"). Whole-brain analyses on baseline RSFC data using an amygdala seed region-of-interest (ROI) showed that controls had greater RSFC, relative to escalators, between the right amygdala and left inferior frontal and supramarginal gyrus and right mid-cingulate cortex. Additionally, relative to escalators, control youth had less RSFC between the left amygdala and cerebellum. Findings suggest a possible neurobiological marker of increasing depressive symptoms during adolescence, characterized in part by reduced fronto-limbic connectivity, suggesting a premorbid deficiency in top-down emotional regulation.
抑郁症在青少年中很常见，在特定年份中，超过 12%的青少年受其影响。研究表明，与对照组相比，抑郁青少年的杏仁核连接存在异常；然而，尚无研究检验这些异常是否先于抑郁症状表现，并加剧了患病风险。本研究使用静息态功能磁共振成像（RSFC），来检验青少年（年龄在 12-16 岁之间；基线时无精神病理学）不断加剧的抑郁症状的神经生物学标志物。在一个较大的青少年样本中，有 18 名青少年的抑郁量表 t 分数在随访期间（6 至 54 个月）增加了≥1 个标准差（“加剧者”），他们与在随访期间抑郁量表评分稳定的 19 名青少年（“对照组”）相匹配和比较。使用杏仁核种子区域感兴趣（ROI）对基线 RSFC 数据进行全脑分析表明，与加剧者相比，对照组的右侧杏仁核与左侧额下回和缘上回以及右侧扣带回中部之间的 RSFC 更大。此外，与加剧者相比，对照组青少年的左杏仁核与小脑之间的 RSFC 较小。研究结果表明，在青少年时期，抑郁症状不断加剧可能存在一种神经生物学标志物，其特征部分在于额-边缘连接减少，这表明存在一种先天的自上而下的情绪调节缺陷。
