Goodin Peter, Lamp Gemma, Hughes Matthew E, Rossell Susan L, Ciorciari Joseph
Centre for Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia.
Melbourne Brain Centre @ Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
Front Psychiatry. 2019 Mar 5;10:60. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00060. eCollection 2019.
People with depression have shown alterations in processing emotional information and working memory functionality. There is some evidence that emotional content may interact with working memory update processes, however neurological correlates are current unknown. In this preliminary study we utilized a novel version of the emotional variant of the n-back working memory task in fMRI. We examined BOLD response of 14 healthy controls and 13 depressed participants in response to happy, sad, and neutral displays of facial affect. No accuracy or reaction time differences were found between the two groups. The depressed group showed significantly decreased BOLD response to happy faces compared to the control group areas of the dorsal striatum and anterior cingulate. Significant, moderate, positive associations were found between right caudate activation with anxiety score and anterior cingulate activation with depression score in those with depression. Our novel task was able to elicit group level differences in emotional processing during working memory update. These results suggest those with depression fail to differentiate between positive emotional stimuli and stimuli with no emotional content.
抑郁症患者在处理情绪信息和工作记忆功能方面出现了改变。有证据表明情绪内容可能与工作记忆更新过程相互作用，然而目前尚不清楚其神经学关联。在这项初步研究中，我们在功能磁共振成像（fMRI）中使用了n-back工作记忆任务的情绪变体的新版本。我们检查了14名健康对照者和13名抑郁症参与者对快乐、悲伤和中性面部表情显示的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）反应。两组之间未发现准确性或反应时间差异。与对照组相比，抑郁症组对快乐面孔的BOLD反应在背侧纹状体和前扣带回区域显著降低。在抑郁症患者中，右侧尾状核激活与焦虑评分以及前扣带回激活与抑郁评分之间存在显著、中等程度的正相关。我们的新任务能够在工作记忆更新过程中引发情绪处理方面的组间差异。这些结果表明，抑郁症患者无法区分积极情绪刺激和无情绪内容的刺激。
