School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada.
Psychiatry Res. 2021 Dec;306:114229. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114229. Epub 2021 Sep 28.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are frequently comorbid with each other, and both associated with substantial cognitive impairments; however, it is still unclear whether their impairments are neurobiologically similar or distinct. This study aims to investigate the cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in patients with MDD and GAD during the verbal fluency task (VFT) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Fifty-two patients with MDD, fifty-one patients with GAD, fifty-two patients with the comorbidity of MDD and GAD (CMG), and forty-seven healthy controls (HC) participated in the study. Significant hypoactivation in the left ventrolateral and the left dorsolateral PFC was common in all patient groups when compared to HCs, suggesting a shared etiology. Furthermore, MDD patients showed significant hypoactivation at the right frontal pole cortex (FPoC) when compared to HCs and significant hypoactivation at the middle FPoC when compared to the CMG patients. Our work is the first fNIRS study to reveal the shared and unique neurobiological profiles of MDD, GAD and their comorbidity under the same standard experimentation condition, suggesting fNIRS holds promise as an adjutant to assist clinical diagnosis.
重度抑郁症（MDD）和广泛性焦虑症（GAD）常常同时发生，且两者都与认知功能损害密切相关；然而，它们的损害在神经生物学上是相似的还是不同的，目前仍不清楚。本研究旨在使用功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）研究 MDD 和 GAD 患者在言语流畅性任务（VFT）中的前额叶皮层（PFC）的认知功能。共有 52 名 MDD 患者、51 名 GAD 患者、52 名 MDD 和 GAD 共病（CMG）患者和 47 名健康对照者（HC）参加了研究。与 HC 相比，所有患者组在左腹外侧和左背外侧 PFC 均显示出明显的低激活，表明存在共同的病因。此外，与 HC 相比，MDD 患者在右额极（FPoC）显示出显著的低激活，与 CMG 患者相比，在中额极（FPoC）显示出显著的低激活。我们的工作是首次在相同的标准实验条件下，利用 fNIRS 研究揭示 MDD、GAD 及其共病的共同和独特的神经生物学特征，这表明 fNIRS 有望成为辅助临床诊断的一种手段。
