Abstract
Brain activation associated with anhedonic depression and co-occurring anxious arousal and anxious apprehension was measured by fMRI during performance of an emotion word Stroop task. Consistent with EEG findings, depression was associated with rightward frontal lateralization in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), but only when anxious arousal was elevated and anxious apprehension was low. Activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was also reduced for depression under the same conditions. In contrast, depression was associated with more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal ACC and rostral ACC) and the bilateral amygdala. Results imply that depression, particularly when accompanied by anxious arousal, may result in a failure to implement top-down processing by appropriate brain regions (left DLPFC, right IFG) due to increased activation in regions associated with responding to emotionally salient information (right DLPFC, amygdala).
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This research was supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (R21 DA14111), the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH61358, T32 MH19554, P50 MH079485), and the University of Illinois Beckman Institute and Intercampus Research Initiative in Biotechnology.
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Engels, A.S., Heller, W., Spielberg, J.M. et al. Co-occurring anxiety influences patterns of brain activity in depression. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 10, 141–156 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.10.1.141
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.10.1.141