School of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Lab for Educational Big Data and Policymaking, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2024 May;45(7):e26702. doi: 10.1002/hbm.26702.
Imaging studies of subthreshold depression (StD) have reported structural and functional abnormalities in a variety of spatially diverse brain regions. However, there is no consensus among different studies. In the present study, we applied a multimodal meta-analytic approach, the Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE), to test the hypothesis that StD exhibits spatially convergent structural and functional brain abnormalities compared to healthy controls. A total of 31 articles with 25 experiments were included, collectively representing 1001 subjects with StD. We found consistent differences between StD and healthy controls mainly in the left insula across studies with various neuroimaging methods. Further exploratory analyses found structural atrophy and decreased functional activities in the right pallidum and thalamus in StD, and abnormal spontaneous activity converged to the middle frontal gyrus. Coordinate-based meta-analysis found spatially convergent structural and functional impairments in StD. These findings provide novel insights for understanding the neural underpinnings of subthreshold depression and enlighten the potential targets for its early screening and therapeutic interventions in the future.
阈下抑郁（StD）的影像学研究报告称，在各种空间不同的大脑区域存在结构和功能异常。然而，不同的研究之间没有共识。在本研究中，我们应用了一种多模态的荟萃分析方法——激活似然估计（ALE），来检验阈下抑郁与健康对照组相比存在空间上一致的结构和功能脑异常的假设。共有 31 篇文章和 25 个实验被纳入，总共代表了 1001 名阈下抑郁患者。我们发现，使用各种神经影像学方法的研究之间，左侧脑岛存在一致的差异。进一步的探索性分析发现，阈下抑郁患者的右侧苍白球和丘脑存在结构萎缩和功能活动减少，而异常的自发活动则集中在额中回。基于坐标的荟萃分析发现，阈下抑郁存在空间一致的结构和功能损伤。这些发现为理解阈下抑郁的神经基础提供了新的见解，并为未来其早期筛查和治疗干预的潜在靶点提供了启示。
