Wang Xiaoxia, Zhou Xiaoyan, Li Jing, Gong Yushun, Feng Zhengzhi
Department of Basic Psychology, School of Psychology, Army Medical University, Chongqing, China.
Chongqing City Mental Health Center, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Dec 5;14:1253727. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1253727. eCollection 2023.
Anhedonia is a hallmark symptom of depression that often lacks adequate interventions. The translational gap remains in clinical treatments based on neural substrates of anhedonia. Our pilot study found that depressed individuals depended less on goal-directed (GD) reward learning (RL), with reduced reward prediction error (RPE) BOLD signal. Previous studies have found that anhedonia is related to abnormal activities and/or functional connectivities of the central executive network (CEN) and salience network (SN), both of which belong to the goal-directed system. In addition, it was found that real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) neurofeedback (NF) could improve the balance between CEN and SN in healthy individuals. Therefore, we speculate that rt-fMRI NF of the CEN and SN associated with the GD system may improve depressive and/or anhedonic symptoms. Therefore, this study (1) will examine individuals with anhedonic depression using GD-RL behavioral task, combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging and computational modeling to explore the role of CEN/SN deficits in anhedonic depression; and (2) will utilize network-based rt-fMRI NF to investigate whether it is feasible to regulate the differential signals of brain CEN/SN of GD system through rt-fMRI NF to alleviate depressive and/or anhedonic symptoms. This study highlights the need to elucidate the intervention effects of rt-fMRI NF and the underlying computational network neural mechanisms.
快感缺失是抑郁症的一个标志性症状，通常缺乏有效的干预措施。基于快感缺失神经基质的临床治疗仍存在转化差距。我们的初步研究发现，抑郁症患者对目标导向（GD）奖励学习（RL）的依赖较少，奖励预测误差（RPE）的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）信号降低。先前的研究发现，快感缺失与中央执行网络（CEN）和突显网络（SN）的异常活动和/或功能连接有关，这两个网络都属于目标导向系统。此外，研究发现实时功能磁共振成像（rt-fMRI）神经反馈（NF）可以改善健康个体CEN和SN之间的平衡。因此，我们推测，与GD系统相关的CEN和SN的rt-fMRI NF可能会改善抑郁和/或快感缺失症状。因此，本研究（1）将使用GD-RL行为任务对快感缺失性抑郁症患者进行检查，结合功能磁共振成像和计算模型，以探索CEN/SN缺陷在快感缺失性抑郁症中的作用；（2）将利用基于网络的rt-fMRI NF来研究通过rt-fMRI NF调节GD系统脑CEN/SN的差异信号以减轻抑郁和/或快感缺失症状是否可行。本研究强调了阐明rt-fMRI NF的干预效果及其潜在的计算网络神经机制的必要性。
