Neural responses to facial emotions and subsequent clinical outcomes in difficult-to-treat depression.
Psychol Med
; : 1-9, 2024 May 17.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38757184
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex responses to facial emotions have shown promise in predicting treatment response in medication-free major depressive disorder (MDD). Here, we examined their role in the pathophysiology of clinical outcomes in more chronic, difficult-to-treat forms of MDD.METHODS:
Forty-five people with current MDD who had not responded to ⩾2 serotonergic antidepressants (n = 42, meeting pre-defined fMRI minimum quality thresholds) were enrolled and followed up over four months of standard primary care. Prior to medication review, subliminal facial emotion fMRI was used to extract blood-oxygen level-dependent effects for sad v. happy faces from two pre-registered a priori defined regions bilateral amygdala and dorsal/pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. Clinical outcome was the percentage change on the self-reported Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (16-item).RESULTS:
We corroborated our pre-registered hypothesis (NCT04342299) that lower bilateral amygdala activation for sad v. happy faces predicted favorable clinical outcomes (rs[38] = 0.40, p = 0.01). In contrast, there was no effect for dorsal/pregenual anterior cingulate cortex activation (rs[38] = 0.18, p = 0.29), nor when using voxel-based whole-brain analyses (voxel-based Family-Wise Error-corrected p < 0.05). Predictive effects were mainly driven by the right amygdala whose response to happy faces was reduced in patients with higher anxiety levels.CONCLUSIONS:
We confirmed the prediction that a lower amygdala response to negative v. positive facial expressions might be an adaptive neural signature, which predicts subsequent symptom improvement also in difficult-to-treat MDD. Anxiety reduced adaptive amygdala responses.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Psychol Med
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Reino Unido