Ventral Striatum Functional Connectivity during Rewards and Losses and Symptomatology in Depressed Patients
Section snippets
Background
Preferential processing of negative versus positive events, such as monetary losses and rewards, is a hallmark of depressive states. Theories of depression have posited that vulnerable and depressed individuals exhibit a cognitive triad comprised by rigid negative attributions regarding the self, one’s environment, and one’s future (Beck, 1972; Beck, Brown, Steer, Eidelson, & Riskind, 1987), including persistent cognitive elaboration regarding flaws, failures and negative events, i.e.
Participants
Recruitment took place at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Pittsburgh, and through advertisements. Subjects were evaluated with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-Research-Version (SCID-P) (First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams, 1995) and scanned in an MRI. Participants completed the Structured Clinical Interview for Mood Spectrum (SCI-MOODS) which yields continuous scale measures of mood symptoms such as depressed mood, anhedonia, and suicide thoughts (Rothwell & Stock, 1982
Corticostriatal functional connectivity in depressed versus healthy adults
Table 2 and Fig. 2 shows a main effect of group yielded by the 2 (group) by 6 (contrasts) GLM, which showed that compared to controls, depressed patients had large neural areas and significant peaks of BOLD signal coupled to the left and right VS during all negative versus all positive outcomes. These areas of increased coupling with the VS were primarily right midline cortical structures including the precuneus, and areas within the PFC (i.e., ACC and BA10). Increased VS to left caudate and
Discussion
This study compared the striatal network of depressed patients versus healthy control adults during the processing of positive and negative monetary outcomes. It also examined whether the strength of connectivity in the striatal network was associated with self-report ratings of anhedonia, depressed mood, suicidality and severity of depression.
Our first hypothesis, which predicted higher PFC-VS coupling for losses versus earnings among depressed participants, was confirmed. Our results (Fig. 2,
Financial disclosures
Dr. Mary Phillips is a representative for Roche Pharmaceuticals. No other author have biomedical finantial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a NIMH, K01MH092601 to the first author and by an NMH, R01MH076971 to the last author. We are very grateful to Drs. Tom Zeffiro and Kathleen Thomas: key mentors and supporters of the first author’s K award application and progress. VAD acknowledges support from R01s, MH059299 and MH111177.
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- 1
University of Minnesota, Department of Psychiatry, 2450 Riverside Avenue, Mpls, MN, 55454, USA.
- 2
University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health, 281 Heather Drive, Pittsburgh, PA,15209, USA.
- 3
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, 130 De Soto Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.