Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:44:15.746Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Depressed Subjects Have Decreased rCBF Activation During Facial Emotion Recognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Abstract

Depressed subjects have deficits in facialemotion recognition that resemble the deficits found in persons with focal right hemisphere brain damage. To locate the brain regions responsible for this problem, the authors imaged regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) with H2O15 positron emission tomography in 10 mood-disordered patients, as well as in 10 age- and sex-matched healthy comparison subjects, while the subjects matched photographs for facial emotion or, as a control, facial identity. While matching faces for emotion, mood-disordered subjects had decreased rCBF activation bilaterally in their temporal lobes, as well as in the right insula, compared with healthy comparison subjects. Abnormal function of limbic and paraiimbic regions may partially explain the facial emotion-recognition deficits previously noted in depressed subjects.

Type
Feature Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Post, RM, Ballenger, JC, eds. Neurobiology of Mood Disorders. Baltimore, Md: Williams and Wilkins; 1984.Google Scholar
2.Wolff, EA, Putnam, FW, Post, RM. Motor activity and affective illness: the relationship of amplitude and temporal distribution to changes in affective state. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1985;42:288294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
3.Kupfer, DJ, Weiss, BL, Foster, FG, et al.Psychomotor activity in affective states. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1974;30:765768.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
4.Szuba, MP, Baxter, LR, Fairbanks, LA, et al.Effects of partial sleep deprivation on the diurnal variation of mood and motor activity in major depression. Biol Psychiatry. 1991;30:817829.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
5.Gillin, JC, Sitaram, N, Wehr, T, et al.Sleep and affective illness. In: Post, RM, Ballenger, JC, eds. Neurobiology of Mood Disorders. Baltimore, Md: Williams and Wilkins; 1984:157190.Google Scholar
6.Rubinow, DR, Post, RM, Gold, PW, et al.The relationship between Cortisol and clinical phenomenology of affective illness. In: Post, RM, Ballenger, JC, eds. Neurobiology of Mood Disorders. Baltimore, Md: Williams and Wilkins; 1984:271289.Google Scholar
7.Weingartner, H, Silberman, EK. Cognitive changes in depression. In: Post, RM, Ballenger, JC, eds. Neurobiology of Mood Disorders. Baltimore, Md: Willams and Wilkins; 1984.Google Scholar
8.Kinsbourne, M, ed. Cerebral Hemisphere Function in Depression. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press; 1988.Google Scholar
9.Rubinow, DR, Post, RM. Impaired recognition of affect in facial expression in depressed patients. Biol Psychiatry. 1992;31:947953.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10.Gur, RC, Erwin, RJ, Gur, RE, et al.Facial emotion discrimination: II. Behavioral findings in depression. Psychiatry Res. 1993;42:241251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.George, MS, Huggins, T, McDermut, W, et al.Abnormal facial emotion recognition in depression: serial testing in an ultra-rapid-cycling patient. Behav Modif. 1994. In press.Google Scholar
12.Sackeim, HA, Putz, E, Vingiano, W, et al.Lateralization in the processing of emotionally laden information. I. Normal functioning. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behav Neurology. 1988;1:97110.Google Scholar
13.Sackeim, HA, Greenberg, MS, Weiman, AL, et al.Hemispheric asymmetry in the expression of positive and negative emotions. Neurologic evidence. Arch Neurol. 1982;39:210218.Google Scholar
14.Ross, ED, Harney, JH, deLacoste-Utamsing, C, et al.How the brain integrates affective and propositional language into a unified behavioral function: hypothesis based on clinicoanatomic evidence. Arch Neurol. 1981:38:745748.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
15.Ross, ED, Mesulam, MM. Dominant language functions of the right hemisphere: prosody and emotional gesturing. Arch Neurol. 1979;36:144148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
16.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Post, RM. SPECT and PET imaging in mood disorders. J Clin Psychiatry. 1993;54:613.Google Scholar
17.Sackeim, HA, Prohovnik, I. Brain imaging studies of depressive disorders. In: Mann, JJ, Kupfer, DJ, eds. The Biology of Depressive Disorders. New York, NY: Plenum; 1993.Google Scholar
18.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Kimbrell, TA, et al.Brain imaging in mania. In: Goodnick, PJ, ed. Mania. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. In press.Google Scholar
19.George, MS. An introduction to the emerging neuroanatomy of depression. Psychiatric Ann. 1994:24:635636.Google Scholar
20.Drevets, WC, Videen, TO, Preskorn, SH, et al.A functional anatomical study of unipolar depression. J Neurosci. 1992;12:36283641.Google Scholar
21.Sackeim, HA, Prohovnik, I, Moeller, JR, et al.Regional cerebral blood flow in mood disorders. I Comparison of major depressives and normal controls at rest. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1990;47:6070.Google Scholar
22.Post, RM, Delisi, LE, Holcomb, HH, et al.Glucose utilization in the temporal cortex of affectively ill patients: positron emission tomography. Biol Psychiatry. 1987;22:4654.Google Scholar
23.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Post, RM. Activation studies in mood disorders. Psychiatric Ann. 1994;24:648652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Gill, DS, et al. The Neuroanatomy of Facial Emotion Recognition. American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting; May 27, 1993, San Francisco, CA; New Research:63 Abstract #16.Google Scholar
25.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Gill, D, et al.Brain regions involved in recognizing facial emotion or identity: an 015 PET Study. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1993;5:384394.Google Scholar
26.Haxby, JV, Horwitz, B, Ungerleider, LG, et al.The functional organization of human extrastriate cortex: a PET-rCBF study of selective attention to faces and locations. J Neurosci. 1994;14:63366353.Google Scholar
27.Spitzer, RL, Williams, JBW, Gibbon, M, et al.Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R. New York, NY: NYS Psychiatric Institute; 1988.Google Scholar
28.Endicott, J, Spitzer, RL. A diagnostic interview: the schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1978;35:837844.Google Scholar
29.Annett, M. A classification of hand preference by association analysis. Br J Psychol. 1970;61:303321.Google Scholar
30.Abboud, H: Superlab: General Purpose Psychology Testing Software, Version 1.4. Rockville, MD: Cedrus Corporation; 1992.Google Scholar
31.Erwin, RJ, Gur, RC, Gur, RE, et al.Facial emotion discrimination: I. Task construction and behavioral findings in normals. Psychiatr Res. 1993;42:231240.Google Scholar
32.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Parekh, PI, et al.Spatial ability in affective illness: differences in regional brain activation during a spatial matching task (H2015 PET). Neuropsychiatry Neuropscyhology Behavioral Neurology. 1994;7:143153.Google Scholar
33.Herscovitch, P, Markham, J, Raichle, ME. Brain blood flow measured with intravenous H2150. Theory and error analysis. J Nucl Med. 1983;24:782789.Google Scholar
34. Analyze: Reference Manual, Version 5.0. Rochester, Minn: Biomedical Imaging Resource, Mayo Foundation; 1991.Google Scholar
35.Friston, KJ, Frith, CD, Liddle, PF, et al.The relationship between global and local changes in PET scans. J Gereb Blood Flow Metab. 1990;10:458466.Google Scholar
36.Friston, KJ, Passingham, RE, Nutt, JG, et al.Localisation in PET images: direct fitting of the intercommissural (AC-PC) line. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1989:9:690695.Google Scholar
37.Friston, KJ, Frith, CD, Liddle, PF, et al.Comparing functional (PET) images: the assessment of significant change. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1991;11:690699.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
38.Talairach, J and Tournoux, P. Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain: 3-Dimensional proportional system: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging. New York, NY: Thieme; 1988.Google Scholar
39.Friston, KJ, Worsley, KJ, Frackowiak, RSJ, et al.Assessing the significance of focal activations using their spatial extent. Human Brain Mapping. 1994;1:210220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
40.Bailey, DL, Jones, T, Spinks, TJ. A method for measuring the absolute sensitivity of positron emission tomographic scanners. Eur JNuclMed. 1991;18:374379.Google ScholarPubMed
41.Kolb, B, Taylor, L. Affective behavior in patients with localized cortical excisions: role of lesion site and side. Science. 1981;214:8990.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
42.Cohen, RM, Semple, WE, Gross, M, et al.Dysfunction in a prefrontal substrate of sustained attention in schizophrenia. LifeSci. 1987;40:20312039.Google Scholar
43.Haxby, JV, Grady, CL, Horwitz, B, et al.Individual differences in visuoperceptual performance are not related to increases in regional cerebral blood flow during visual processing. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1991;11:S433.Google Scholar
44.Etcoff, NL. Selective attention to facial identity and facial emotion. Neuropsychologia. 1984;22:281295.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
45.Suberi, M, McKeever, WF. Differential right hemispheric memory storage of emotional and non-emotional faces. Neuropsychologia. 1977;15:757768.Google Scholar
46.DeKosky, ST, Heilman, KM, Bowers, D, et al.Recognition and discrimination of emotional faces and pictures. Brain Lang. 1980;9:206214.Google Scholar
47.Bell, WL, Davis, DL, Morgan-Fisher, A, et al.Acquired aprosodia in children. J Child Neurol. 1990;5:1926.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
48.Ross, ED. The aprosodias: functional-anatomic organization of the affective components of language in the right hemisphere. Arch Neurol. 1981;38:561569.Google Scholar
49.Cancelliere, AEB, Kertesz, A. Lesion localization in acquired deficits of emotional expression and comprehension. Brain Cogn. 1990;13:133147.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
50.Ley, RG, Bryden, MP. Hemispheric differences in processing emotions and faces. Brain Lang. 1979;7:127138.Google Scholar
51.Hauser, MD. Right hemisphere dominance for the production of facial expression in monkeys. Science. 1993;261:475477.Google Scholar
52.Coffey, CE. Cerebral laterality and emotion: the neurology of depression. Compr Psychiatry. 1987;28:197219.Google Scholar
53.Bowers, D, Bauer, RM. Processing of faces by patients with unilateral hemisphere lesions. I. Dissociation between judgments of facial affect and facial identity. Brain Cogn. 1985;4:258272.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
54.Bowers, D, Heilman, KM. Dissociation between the processing of affective and nonaffective faces: a case study. J Clin Neuropsychol. 1984;6:367379.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
55.Bowers, D, Blonder, LX, Feinberg, T, et al.Differential impact of right and left hemisphere lesions on facial emotion and object imagery. Brain. 1991;114:25932609.Google Scholar
56.Blonder, LX, Bowers, D, Heilman, KM. The role of the right hemisphere in emotional communication. Brain. 1991;114:11151127.Google Scholar
57.Dube, S, Dobkin, JA, Bowler, KA, et al.Cerebral perfusion changes with antidepressant response in major depression. Biol Psychiatry. 1993;33:47A. Abstract #40.Google Scholar
58.Baxter, LR Jr, Schwartz, JM, Phelps, ME, et al.Reduction of prefrontal cortex glucose metabolism common to three types of depression. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;46:243250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
59.Dolan, RJ, Bench, CJ, Brown, RG, et al.Regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities in depressed patients with cognitive impairment. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1992;55:768773.Google Scholar
60.Bench, CJ, Friston, KJ, Brown, RG, et al.The anatomy of melancholia - focal abnormalities of cerebral blood flow in major depression. Psychol Med. 1992;22:607615.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
61.Martinot, JL, Hardy, P, Feline, A, et al.Left prefrontal glucose hypometabolism in the depressed state: a confirmation. Am J Psychiatry. 1990;147:13131317.Google Scholar
62.Pardo, JV, Pardo, PJ, Raichle, ME. Neural correlates of self-induced dysphoria. Am J Psychiatry. 1993;150:713719.Google Scholar
63.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Parekh, PI, et al.Regional blood flow correlates of transient self-induced sadness or happiness. Biol Psychiatry. 1994:35:647. Abstract.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Parekh, PI, et al.Brain activity during transient sadness and happiness in healthy women. Am J Psychiatry. 1995;152:341351.Google Scholar
65.Weinberger, DR, Berman, KF, Daniel, DG. Prefrontal cortex dysfunction in schizophrenia. In: Levin, HS, Eisenberg, HM, Benton, AL, eds. Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1991:275287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
66.Oscar-Berman, M, McNamara, P, Freedman, M. Delayed-response tasks: parallels between experimental ablation studies and findings in patients with frontal lesions. In: Levin, HS, Eisenberg, HM, Benton, AL, eds. Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1991:230255.Google Scholar
67.Goldman-Rakic, PS, Friedman, HR. The circuitry of working memory revealed by anatomy and metabolic imaging. In: Levin, HS, Eisenberg, HM, Benton, AL, eds. Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1991:7291.Google Scholar
68.Berman, KF, Weinberger, DR. The prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric diseases: in vivo physiological correlates of cognitive deficits. In: Uylings, HBM, Van Eden, CG, De Bruin, JPC, et, al, eds. Progress in Brain Research. Vol 85. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Science Publishers; 1990:521537.Google Scholar
69.Weinberger, DR, Berman, KF, Zee, RF. Physiologic dysfunction of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia. I. Regional cerebral blood flow evidence. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1986;43:114124.Google Scholar
70.Berman, KF, Illowsky, BP, Weinberger, DR. Physiological dysfunction of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia. IV. Further evidence for regional and behavioral specificity. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1988:45:616622.Google Scholar
71.Berman, KF, Doran, AR, Pickar, D, et al.Is the mechanism of prefrontal hypofunction in depression the same as in schizophrenia? Regional cerebral blood flow during cognitive activation. Br J Psychiatry. 1993;162:183192.Google Scholar
72.George, MS, Ketter, TA, Parekh, PI, et al.Blunted left cin-gulate activation in mood disorder subjects during a response interference task (The Stroop). J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1997;9:5563.Google Scholar
73.Dolan, RJ, Bench, CJ, Liddle, PF, et al.Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex dysfunction in the major psychoses; symptom or disease specificity? J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1993;56:12901294.Google Scholar
74.Pardo, JV, Pardo, PJ, Janer, KW, et al.The anterior cingu-late cortex mediates processing selection in the Stroop attentional conflict paradigm. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1990;87:256259.Google Scholar
75.Pardo, JV, Fox, PT, Raichle, ME. Localization of a human system for sustained attention by positron emission tomography. Nature. 1991;349:6164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
76.Corbetta, M, Miezin, FM, Shulman, GL, et al.A PET study of visuospatial attention. J Neurosci. 1993;13:12021226.Google Scholar
77.Talairach, J, Bancaud, J, Geier, S, et al.The cingulate gyrus and human behaviour. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1973;34:4552.Google Scholar
78.Vogt, BA, Finch, DM, Olson, CR. Functional heterogeneity in cingulate cortex: the anterior executive and posterior evaluative regions. Cereb Cortex. 1992;2:435443.Google ScholarPubMed
79.Wu, JC, Gillin, JC, Buchsbaum, MS, et al.Effect of sleep deprivation on brain metabolism of depressed patients. Am J Psychiatry. 1992;149:538543.Google ScholarPubMed
80.Ebert, D, Feistel, H, Barocka, A. Effects of sleep deprivation on the limbic system and the frontal lobes in affective disorders: a study with Tc-99m-HMPAO SPECT. Psychiatry Res. 1991;40:247251.Google Scholar
81.Baxter, LR, Schwartz, JM, Guze, BH, et al.PET imaging in obsessive compulsive disorder with and without depression. J Clin Psychiatry. 1990;51:6169.Google Scholar
82.Baxter, LR, Schwartz, JM, Mazziotta, JC, et al.Cerebral glucose metabolic rates in non-depressed patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Am J Psychiatry. 1988;145:15601563.Google Scholar
83.Machlin, SR, Harris, GJ, Pearlson, GD, et al.Elevated medial-frontal cerebral blood flow in obsessive-compulsive patients: a SPECT study. Am J Psychiatry. 1991;148:12401242.Google Scholar
84.Nordahl, TE, Benkelfat, C, Semple, WE, et al.Cerebral glucose metabolic rates in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Neuropsychopharmacology. 1989;2:2328.Google Scholar
85.Swedo, SE, Schapiro, MB, Grady, CL, et al.Cerebral glucose metabolism in childhood onset obsessive-compulsive disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;46:518523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
86.George, MS. The contributions of PET and SPECT toward a psychopharmacologic neuroanatomy of obsessive-compulsive disorder. In: Hindmarch, I, Stonier, P, eds. Human Psychopharmacology: Measures and Methods. Vol 4. London, England: John Wiley and Sons; 1993:99122.Google Scholar
87.George, MS, Trimble, MR, Costa, DC, et al.Elevated frontal blood flow in Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome (GTS): a 99Tcm-HMPAO SPECT Study. Psychiatry Res. 1992;45:143151.Google Scholar
88.Baxter, LR. Brain imaging as a tool in establishing a theory of brain pathology in obsessive compulsive disorder. J Clin Psychiatry. 1990;51(suppl):2225.Google Scholar
89.Hoehn-Saric, R, Pearlson, GD, Harris, GJ, et al.Effects of fluoxetine on regional cerebral blood flow in obsessive-compulsive patients. Am J Psychiatry. 1991;148:12431245.Google Scholar
90.Rauch, SL, Jenike, MA, Alpert, N, et al.PET Study of OCD During Symptom Provocation. American Psychiatric Association New Research Abstracts. May 23, 1993, San Francisco; 133-NR293. Abstract.Google Scholar
91.Rauch, SL, Jenike, MA, Alpert, NM, et al.Regional cerebral blood flow measured during symptom provocation in obsessive-compulsive disorder using 150-labelled C02 and positron emission tomography. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1994:51:62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
92.Hamilton, M. A rating scale for depression. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1960;12:5662.Google Scholar
93.Bunney, WE Jr, Hamburg, DA. Methods for reliable longitudinal observation of behavior. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1963;9:280294.Google Scholar