Department of Psychology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China; Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Dec;149:107669. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107669. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
Most studies on the mechanism behind premenstrual syndrome (PMS) have focused on negative emotional overreaction, but little evidence exists regarding the weakening of positive emotions. Given the close relationship between positive emotions and reward processing, the aim of this study is to investigate the dysfunction of reward processing in women with PMS.
Seventeen women with PMS and seventeen healthy women were scanned during a card guessing task in the late luteal phase. By selecting bilateral caudate and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) as seed regions, region-of-interest (ROI) analysis and functional connectivity (psycho-physiological interaction [PPI]) analysis were conducted to compare the difference between two groups. Exploratory whole brain analysis was also conducted to examine the group differences in other reward-related brain regions.
ROI analysis revealed that healthy women showed stronger activation at the bilateral caudate and OFC when gains were contrasted to losses feedback, whereas women with PMS showed no significant difference between these two conditions. Whole brain analysis indicated that healthy women showed stronger activation at the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) when gains were contrasted to losses feedback, whereas women with PMS showed no significant difference between these two conditions. Furthermore, separate analysis on healthy women revealed significant clusters of greater activation to gains minus losses that included the bilateral caudate, right middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior occipital gyrus; conversely, no significant clusters of activations to gains minus losses were observed in women with PMS. PPI analysis results revealed that women with PMS exhibited lower functional connectivity between the right caudate and the right cerebellum than healthy women when experiencing gains versus losses.
Our findings provide one of the first evidence that PMS is related to dysfunction in reward processing, which could be associated with the weakening of positive emotions.
大多数关于经前综合征（PMS）背后机制的研究都集中在负性情绪过度反应上，但关于积极情绪减弱的证据很少。鉴于积极情绪与奖励处理密切相关，本研究旨在探讨 PMS 女性奖励处理功能障碍。
17 名 PMS 女性和 17 名健康女性在黄体晚期进行卡片猜测任务时接受扫描。通过选择双侧尾状核和眶额皮层（OFC）作为种子区域，进行感兴趣区（ROI）分析和功能连接（心理生理交互[PPI]）分析，比较两组之间的差异。还进行了探索性全脑分析，以检查其他与奖励相关的大脑区域的组间差异。
ROI 分析显示，当收益与损失反馈进行对比时，健康女性双侧尾状核和 OFC 的激活更强，而 PMS 女性在这两种情况下没有显著差异。全脑分析表明，当收益与损失反馈进行对比时，健康女性右侧额中回（MFG）的激活更强，而 PMS 女性在这两种情况下没有显著差异。此外，对健康女性的单独分析显示，与收益减去损失相比，有更大激活的显著聚类包括双侧尾状核、右侧颞中回和左侧枕下回；相反，PMS 女性没有观察到显著的激活聚类。PPI 分析结果显示，与健康女性相比，经历收益与损失时，PMS 女性右侧尾状核与右侧小脑之间的功能连接较低。
我们的研究结果提供了证据之一，表明 PMS 与奖励处理功能障碍有关，这可能与积极情绪减弱有关。
