Ruohonen Elisa M, Kattainen Saara, Li Xueqiao, Taskila Anna-Elisa, Ye Chaoxiong, Astikainen Piia
Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Mar 27;14:98. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00098. eCollection 2020.
Measures of the brain's automatic electrophysiological responses to sounds represent a potential tool for identifying age- and depression-related neural markers. However, these markers have rarely been studied related to aging and depression within one study. Here, we investigated auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain that may show different alterations related to aging and depression. We used an oddball condition employing changes in sound intensity to investigate: (i) sound intensity dependence; (ii) sensory gating; and (iii) change detection, all within a single paradigm. The ERPs of younger (18-40 years) and older (62-80 years) depressed female participants and age-matched non-depressed participants were measured. Intensity dependence was examined as the difference between N1 responses to repeated high- and low-intensity sounds, sensory gating as N1 responses to rare and repeated sounds, and change detection as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN). We found that intensity dependence was greater in older participants than younger ones, indicating effects related to aging but not to depression. For sensory gating, we found depression- and age-related alterations as increased N1 responses. No group differences were found for MMN. Although a sensory gating deficit was expected in older adults, this study is the first to demonstrate age-related overexcitability in sound intensity dependency. The results indicate that automatic brain responses to sound intensity changes are suitable for studying age- and depression-related neural markers but may not be sensitive enough to differentiate the effects of aging and depression.
大脑对声音的自动电生理反应测量是识别与年龄和抑郁症相关的神经标志物的一种潜在工具。然而，在一项研究中，这些标志物很少与衰老和抑郁症相关联进行研究。在此，我们研究了大脑中的听觉事件相关电位（ERP），其可能显示出与衰老和抑郁症相关的不同变化。我们采用了一种使用声音强度变化的oddball条件来研究：（i）声音强度依赖性；（ii）感觉门控；以及（iii）变化检测，所有这些都在一个单一范式内。测量了年轻（18 - 40岁）和年长（62 - 80岁）的抑郁女性参与者以及年龄匹配的非抑郁参与者的ERP。强度依赖性通过对重复的高强度和低强度声音的N1反应之间的差异来检查，感觉门控通过对罕见和重复声音的N1反应来检查，变化检测通过失配负波（MMN）来索引。我们发现年长参与者的强度依赖性比年轻参与者更大，表明这与衰老有关而非与抑郁症有关。对于感觉门控，我们发现与抑郁症和年龄相关的变化表现为N1反应增加。MMN未发现组间差异。尽管预计老年人会存在感觉门控缺陷，但本研究首次证明了在声音强度依赖性方面与年龄相关的过度兴奋性。结果表明，大脑对声音强度变化的自动反应适用于研究与年龄和抑郁症相关的神经标志物，但可能不够敏感以区分衰老和抑郁症的影响。
