Linking social reward responsiveness and affective responses to the social environment: An ecological momentary assessment study.

Social support is a key predictor of well-being, but not everyone experiences mental health benefits from receiving it. However, given that a growing number of interventions are based on social support, it is crucial to identify the features that make individuals more likely to benefit from social ties. Emerging evidence suggests that neural responses to positive social feedback (i.e., social reward) might relate to individual differences in social functioning, but potential mechanisms linking these neural responses to psychological outcomes are yet unclear. This study examined whether neural correlates of social reward processing, indexed by the reward positivity (RewP), relate to individuals' affective experience following self-reported real-world positive social support events. To this aim, 193 university students (71% females) underwent an EEG assessment during the Island Getaway task and completed a 10-day ecological momentary assessment where participants reported their positive and negative affects (PA, NA) nine times a day and the count of daily positive and negative events. Experiencing a higher number of social support positive events was associated with higher PA. The RewP moderated this association, such that individuals with greater neural response to social feedback at baseline had a stronger positive association between social support positive events count and PA. Individual differences in the RewP to social feedback might be one indicator of the likelihood of experiencing positive affect when receiving social support.

Familial risk for depression is associated with reduced physical activity in young adults: evidence from a wrist-worn actigraphy study.

Depression is characterized by reduced physical activity and sleep-wake cycle disturbances, often considered important features of the disease. While a few studies have suggested that self-reported reduced physical activity and sleep-wake cycle disturbances might both be linked to depression vulnerability, actigraphy-based measures in vulnerable samples remain largely unexplored. This study relied on actigraphy-based parameters to test whether these disturbances characterize depression vulnerability. Seven-day actigraphy data were collected from 20 (13 female) university students with a high vulnerability to depression, which was determined by the presence of a family history of the condition but no current symptoms, and 32 (21 female) controls with neither a family history of depression nor current depressive symptoms. Daily physical activity, namely gross motor activity, was quantified as average daily acceleration and time spent engaging in moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). The sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythms were assessed as total sleep duration per night (in hours), sleep within sleep period time (in hours), sleep efficiency (%), and relative amplitude (i.e., the difference between the activity during the day and the night, which reflects circadian rhythms amplitude). Results showed that individuals with a familial risk for depression exhibited reduced daily acceleration and time spent in MVPA relative to the control group, particularly on the weekend during their free time away from scheduled activities. On the other hand, the two groups were comparable in terms of sleep estimates. Taken together, reduced physical activity, but not sleep-wake disturbances, seem to be associated with vulnerability to depression and might be a viable target for identification and prevention efforts.

Affective processing in dysphoria: Evidence from startle probe modulation of ERPs.

The hypoactivation of the appetitive and defensive motivational systems in the brain is a feature of depression and might also represent a vulnerability factor for the disorder. A measure that can be employed to investigate both motivational systems is the electroencephalographic response to an acoustic startle probe during affective processing. Particularly, the amplitude of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) components to the startle probe is smaller when the emotional context is more arousing. Neural responses to an unattended startle probe during an emotional passive viewing task of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures was employed to assess the activation of the approach and defensive motivational systems in a sample of individuals with (n = 24, 23 females) vs. without (n = 24, 23 females) dysphoria. The group without dysphoria showed a reduced startle-elicited N200 only in the context of pleasant relative to neutral pictures, indicating that the affective processing of the appetitive context might reduce the attentional resources needed to orient attention toward unattended non-salient stimuli. Conversely, the N200 amplitude was not attenuated for pleasant relative to neutral and unpleasant contexts in the group with dysphoria. Moreover, no within- or between-group differences emerged in the P300 amplitude. Taken together, the results of this study showed that depression vulnerability is characterized by reduced attention to pleasant contexts, suggesting a blunted affective processing of appetitive emotional stimuli.

Rethinking the risk for depression using the RDoC: A psychophysiological perspective.

Considering that the classical categorical approach to mental disorders does not allow a clear identification of at-risk conditions, the dimensional approach provided by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is useful in the exploration of vulnerability to psychopathology. In the RDoC era, psychophysiological models have an important role in the reconceptualization of mental disorders. Indeed, progress in the study of depression vulnerability has increasingly been informed by psychophysiological models. By adopting an RDoC lens, this narrative review focuses on how psychophysiological models can be used to advance our knowledge of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying depression vulnerability. Findings from psychophysiological research that explored multiple RDoC domains in populations at-risk for depression are reviewed and discussed. Future directions for the application of psychophysiological research in reaching a more complete understanding of depression vulnerability and, ultimately, improving clinical utility, are presented.

Error-related brain activity: A time-domain and time-frequency investigation in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Increased error-related negativity (ERN), a measure of error monitoring, has been suggested as a biomarker of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Additional insight into error monitoring is possible using time-frequency decomposition of electroencephalographic (EEG) data, as it allows disentangling the brain's parallel processing of information. Greater error-related theta is thought to reflect an error detection signal, while delta activity may reflect more elaborative post-detection processes (i.e., strategic adjustments). Recent investigations show that decreased error-related alpha may index attentional engagement following errors; additionally, increases and decreases in error-related beta could reflect motor inhibition and motor preparation, respectively. However, time-frequency dynamics of error monitoring in OCD are largely unknown. The present study examined time-frequency theta, delta, alpha and beta power in early adolescents with OCD using a data-driven, cluster-based approach. The aim was to explore electrocortical measures of error monitoring in early adolescents with (n = 27, 15 females) and without OCD (n = 27, 14 females) during an arrowhead version of the flanker task while EEG activity was recorded. Results indicated that the OCD group was characterized by increased ERN and error-related theta, as well as reduced error-related beta power decrease (i.e., greater power) compared to participants without OCD. Greater error-related beta explained variance in OCD over and above the ERN and error-related theta. By examining separate time-frequency measures, the present study provides novel insights into the dynamics of error monitoring, suggesting that pediatric OCD may be characterized by enhanced error monitoring (i.e., greater theta power) and post-error inhibition (i.e., reduced beta power decrease).

Reduced heart rate variability and expressive suppression interact to prospectively predict COVID-19 pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique period of stress that, in some cases, led to post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs). Emotion regulation strategies are known to modulate the emotional response to stressful events. Expressive suppression (ES) is a maladaptive strategy related to the exacerbation of the physiological stress response. Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of cardiac autonomic balance strictly related to ES, was also shown to predict PTSSs. This was the first study to investigate whether the pre-pandemic ES use and resting-state HRV predicted pandemic-related PTSSs. Before the pandemic, 83 (58 females) university students completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), self-report measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and a three-minute resting-state electrocardiogram recording. After 12 months, 61 (45 females) participants completed a self-report measure of pandemic-related PTSSs and repeated the self-report psychological measures. Pre-pandemic anxiety symptoms prospectively predicted greater PTSSs. Moreover, a significant interaction between HRV and ES in predicting PTSSs emerged, whereby those who had higher levels of ES and reduced HRV showed higher PTSSs. These findings suggest that an integrated assessment of HRV and ES might be useful for identifying individuals who are more vulnerable to the development of PTSSs during crises.

Depressive symptoms and cognitive control: the role of affective interference.

Depressive symptoms are characterised by reduced cognitive control. However, whether depressive symptoms are linked to difficulty in exerting cognitive control in general or over emotional content specifically remains unclear. To better differentiate between affective interference or general cognitive control difficulties in people with depressive symptoms, we employed a non emotional (cold) and an emotional (hot) version of a task-switching paradigm in a nonclinical sample of young adults (N = 82) with varying levels of depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms were linked to greater difficulties in exerting cognitive control in complex situations (mixed-task blocks) compared to simple and semiautomatic situations (single-task blocks) in both task versions. Moreover, greater depressive symptoms were associated with longer latencies in the emotional version of the task across all trial types. Thus, the emotion-specific effect was not modulated by the degree of cognitive control required to perform the task. In sum, depressive symptoms were characterised by a general difficulty to exert cognitive control in both emotional and non emotional contexts and by greater difficulty in even simple attentional processing of emotional material. This study granted novel insights on the extent of cognitive control difficulties in emotional and non emotional contexts for people with depressive symptoms.

EEG time-frequency analysis reveals blunted tendency to approach and increased processing of unpleasant stimuli in dysphoria.

To date, affective and cognitive processing of emotional information in individuals with depressive symptoms have been examined through peripheral psychophysiological measures, event-related potentials, and time-frequency analysis of oscillatory activity. However, electrocortical correlates of emotional and cognitive processing of affective content in depression have not been fully understood. Time-frequency analysis of electroencephalographic activity allows disentangling the brain's parallel processing of information. The present study employed a time-frequency approach to simultaneously examine affective disposition and cognitive processing during the viewing of emotional stimuli in dysphoria. Time-frequency event-related changes were examined during the viewing of pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures in 24 individuals with dysphoria and 24 controls. Affective disposition was indexed by delta and alpha power, while theta power was employed as a correlate of cognitive elaboration of the stimuli. Cluster-based statistics revealed a centro-parietal reduction in delta power for pleasant stimuli in individuals with dysphoria relative to controls. Also, dysphoria was characterized by an early fronto-central increase in theta power for unpleasant stimuli relative to neutral and pleasant ones. Comparatively, controls were characterized by a late fronto-central and occipital reduction in theta power for unpleasant stimuli relative to neutral and pleasant. The present study granted novel insights on the interrelated facets of affective elaboration in dysphoria, mainly characterized by a hypoactivation of the approach-related motivational system and a sustained facilitated cognitive processing of unpleasant stimuli.

Reduced electrocortical responses to pleasant pictures in depression: A brief report on time-domain and time-frequency delta analyses.

BACKGROUND: The late positive potential (LPP) to pleasant content is an electrocortical indicator of blunted emotional reactivity in depression. A reduced time-frequency delta power has never been investigated in clinical samples. The present study examined time-frequency delta in depression and at investigated whether the combination of time-domain and time-frequency data would explain additional variance in the depression status. METHODS: The study was a secondary analysis of data collected during a passive viewing task of pleasant and neutral pictures in a community-based sample of 75 participants with a current depressive disorder and 42 controls. A time-frequency analysis on event-related changes within delta frequency band was conducted. RESULTS: Cluster-based statistics revealed a centro-parietal increase in delta power to pleasant relative to neutral pictures in the control group but not within the depression group. Moreover, a fronto-centro-parietal reduction in delta power to pleasant pictures emerged in depression relative to controls. Both a smaller LPP and delta power to pleasant pictures were related to depression status. The combination of LPP and delta power explained a greater amount of variance compared to the model where LPP was entered as the only predictor of depression status. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that delta power might be a promising electrocortical correlate of the hypoactivation of the approach-related motivational system in depression. Additionally, a blunted delta and LPP might reflect unique processes related to depression. A combination of these measures can be leveraged together to enhance clinical utility and to shed light on the underlying mechanisms associated with depression.

Emotional processing prospectively modulates the impact of anxiety on COVID-19 pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms: an ERP study.

BACKGROUND: Considering that the elevated distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in some cases, led to post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), it has been proposed as a specific traumatic event. The present longitudinal study investigated pre-pandemic motivated attention to emotional stimuli, as indexed by Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitude, in relation with the potential differential role of anxiety and depressive symptoms in predicting PTSS severity related to the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A total of 79 university students initially completed self-report measures of depression and anxiety along with a passive viewing task of emotional (pleasant, unpleasant) and neutral pictures while electroencephaloghic activity was recorded. In December 2020, 57 participants completed a questionnaire assessing PTSS. RESULTS: Significant interactions between anxiety and LPP emerged in predicting pandemic-related PTSS, where greater anxiety symptoms predicted PTSS only in individuals with greater LPP to unpleasant or with reduced LPP to pleasant stimuli. LIMITATIONS: The prevalence of the female sex, the relatively young age of the participants, as well as the fact that they were all enrolled in a University course might not allow the generalization of the findings. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, the present longitudinal study provided novel evidence on EEG predictors of pandemic-related PTSS that might be useful for the prevention and treatment of PTSS. Indeed, assessing anxiety symptoms and pre-trauma LPP to emotional stimuli might be a useful target for identifying individuals that are more vulnerable to the development of PTSS during times of crisis.

Functional Specialization of the Medial Temporal Lobes in Human Recognition Memory: Dissociating Effects of Hippocampal versus Parahippocampal Damage.

A central debate in the systems neuroscience of memory concerns whether different medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures support different processes in recognition memory. Using two recognition memory paradigms, we tested a rare patient (MH) with a perirhinal lesion that appeared to spare the hippocampus. Consistent with a similar previous case, MH showed impaired familiarity and preserved recollection. When compared with patients with hippocampal lesions appearing to spare perirhinal cortex, MH showed greater impairment on familiarity and less on recollection. Nevertheless, the hippocampal patients also showed impaired familiarity compared with healthy controls. However, when replacing this traditional categorization of patients with analyses relating memory performance to continuous measures of damage across patients, hippocampal volume uniquely predicted recollection, whereas parahippocampal, rather than perirhinal, volume uniquely predicted familiarity. We consider whether the familiarity impairment in MH and our patients with hippocampal lesions arises from "subthreshold" damage to parahippocampal cortex (PHC). Our data provide the most compelling neuropsychological support yet for dual-process models of recognition memory, whereby recollection and familiarity depend on different MTL structures, and may support a role for PHC in familiarity. Our study highlights the value of supplementing single-case studies with examinations of continuous brain-behavior relationships across larger patient groups.

Disentangling emotional processing in dysphoria: An ERP and cardiac deceleration study.

The present study aimed to investigate emotional processing in dysphoria. To this end, the amplitude of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) and cardiac deceleration were assessed during the passive viewing of affective (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) pictures in 26 individuals with dysphoria and in 25 non-depressed controls. The group with dysphoria revealed a smaller LPP amplitude than the group without dysphoria in response to pleasant and neutral, but not unpleasant, stimuli at centro-parieto-occipital sites. Interestingly, whereas both groups showed cardiac deceleration when viewing pleasant compared to neutral pictures (3-6 s time window), only individuals with dysphoria showed a prolonged cardiac deceleration in response to unpleasant stimuli as compared with neutral ones. This study suggests that dysphoria is characterized by reduced motivated attentional allocation to positive information and by sustained intake of unpleasant information. Overall, the present findings provide novel insights into the characterization of valence-specific attentional processes in dysphoria as potential vulnerability factors for clinically significant depression.

Depressed mood, brooding rumination and affective interference: The moderating role of heart rate variability.

Facilitated processing of negative information might contribute to the etiopathogenesis and maintenance of depressive symptoms. Cardiac vagal tone, indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), is believed to represent a proxy of the functional integrity of the neural networks implicated in brooding rumination, affective interference and depression. The present study examined whether HRV may moderate the relation between brooding rumination, affective interference and depressive symptoms in a sample of healthy individuals (n = 68) with different degrees of depressed mood. Self-report measures of depression and brooding were collected, whereas the emotional Stroop task was employed to measure affective interference. Three-minute resting-state electrocardiogram was recorded to obtain time- and frequency-domain vagally mediated HRV parameters. Stepwise linear regression analyses revealed that HRV was a significant moderator of the positive association between depression and brooding rumination, but not of the association between depression and affective interference. An integrated model is supported, in which vagally mediated HRV appeared to potentiate the positive link between depressive symptoms and brooding rumination. Considering that HRV and brooding rumination were found to have an interacting role in determining the severity of depressive symptoms, they may represent potential clinical targets in the prevention and treatment of depressive symptoms.

Increased functional connectivity within alpha and theta frequency bands in dysphoria: A resting-state EEG study.

BACKGROUND: The understanding of neurophysiological correlates underlying the risk of developing depression may have a significant impact on its early and objective identification. Research has identified abnormal resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) power and functional connectivity patterns in major depression. However, the entity of dysfunctional EEG dynamics in dysphoria is yet unknown. METHODS: 32-channel EEG was recorded in 26 female individuals with dysphoria and in 38 age-matched, female healthy controls. EEG power spectra and alpha asymmetry in frontal and posterior channels were calculated in a 4-minute resting condition. An EEG functional connectivity analysis was conducted through phase locking values, particularly mean phase coherence. RESULTS: While individuals with dysphoria did not differ from controls in EEG spectra and asymmetry, they exhibited dysfunctional brain connectivity. Particularly, in the theta band (4-8 Hz), participants with dysphoria showed increased connectivity between right frontal and central areas and right temporal and left occipital areas. Moreover, in the alpha band (8-12 Hz), dysphoria was associated with increased connectivity between right and left prefrontal cortex and between frontal and central-occipital areas bilaterally. LIMITATIONS: All participants belonged to the female gender and were relatively young. Mean phase coherence did not allow to compute the causal and directional relation between brain areas. CONCLUSIONS: An increased EEG functional connectivity in the theta and alpha bands characterizes dysphoria. These patterns may be associated with the excessive self-focus and ruminative thinking that typifies depressive symptoms. EEG connectivity patterns may represent a promising measure to identify individuals with a higher risk of developing depression.

Overlap Between Frontotemporal Dementia and Dementia with Lewy Bodies: A Treviso Dementia (TREDEM) Registry Case Report.

In the present work, we report the case of a patient presenting signs of Lewy body dementia (DLB) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) throughout different phases of the disease. In January 2017, a 79-year-old right-handed living man was admitted to our Memory Clinic for the presence of behavioral disturbances and progressive cognitive decline. For the previous six years, he was monitored by other Neurological Clinics for the onset of extrapyramidal features. Indeed, through the first phase of the disease (2011-2014), the patient predominantly showed: extrapyramidal features, initial cognitive decline, sleep disturbances, and visual hallucinations, together with a reduced dopamine transporter uptake in basal ganglia at the DATscan, suggesting a diagnosis of DLB. In a second phase (2015-2017), while his extrapyramidal features remained substantially stable, his cognitive profile deteriorated, with an additional development of severe behavioral and neuropsychiatric disturbances. Again, a subsequent DATscan study was positive and slightly worse than the preceding one; however, the 18F-FDG PET showed reduced metabolic activity in the frontal and temporal lobes, with the occipital regions left spared. Genetic analysis revealed a hexanucleotide expansion in C9ORF72 (6//38 repeats; ITALSGEN NV <30). In conclusion, we report the case of a patient presenting, firstly, with probable DLB and, in a second phase, with predominant bvFTD features with stable parkinsonism. Even though some clinical and neuropsychological aspects can co-exist in different neurodegenerative diseases, we find such a significant intersection of clinical features to be fairly atypical. Moreover, what is challenging to define is whether the two clinical phenotypes are somehow lying on a continuum, or if they are two individual entities.

A Case with Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease, Frontotemporal Hypometabolism, ApoE Genotype ɛ4/ɛ4 and C9ORF72 Intermediate Expansion: A Treviso Dementia (TREDEM) Registry Case Report.

We report the case of a woman firstly referred to our Memory Clinic at the age of 61, following the development of cognitive complaints and difficulties in sustained attention. The investigation that was performed showed: predominant executive dysfunctions at the neuropsychological evaluation, with mild, partial and stable involvement of the memory domain; cortical and subcortical atrophy with well-preserved hippocampal structures at MRI; marked fronto-temporal and moderate parietal hypometabolism from 18F-FDG PET study with a sparing of the posterior cingulate and precuneus; positivity of amyloid-ß at 18F-Flutemetamol PET; an hexanucleotide intermediate repeats expansion of C9ORF72 gene (12//38 repeats) and ApoE genotype ɛ4/ɛ4. The patient was diagnosed with probable early onset frontal variant of Alzheimer's disease (AD), presenting with a major executive function impairment. The lack of specific areas of brain atrophy, as well as the failure to meet the clinical criteria for any frontotemporal dementia, drove us to perform the aforementioned investigations, which yielded our final diagnosis. The present case highlights the need to take into consideration a diagnosis of frontal variant of AD when the metabolic and the clinical picture are somehow dissonant.

Frontotemporal Dementia Misdiagnosed for Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome or vice versa? A Treviso Dementia (TREDEM) Registry Case Report.

We describe the case of a 61-year-old woman diagnosed with Borreliosis at the age of 57. Subsequently, the patient developed depression, anxiety, and behavioral disturbances. A lumbar puncture excluded the condition of Neuroborreliosis. The diagnostic workup included: an MRI scan, a 18F-FDG PET, a 123I-ioflupane-SPECT, an amyloid-ß PET, a specific genetic analysis, and a neuropsychological evaluation. Based on our investigation, the patient was diagnosed with probable behavioral-frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), whereas in the previous years, the patient had been considered firstly as a case of Post-Treatment-Lyme Disease and, secondly, a psychiatric patient. We believe that, in the present case, such initial symptoms of Borrelia infection may have superimposed on those of bvFTD rather than playing as a contributory cause.