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Neural basis of emotion recognition deficits in first-episode major depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

G. A. van Wingen ,
P. van Eijndhoven ,
I. Tendolkar ,
J. Buitelaar ,
R. J. Verkes  and
G. Fernández
G. A. van Wingen*
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department of Neurology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
P. van Eijndhoven
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
I. Tendolkar
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
J. Buitelaar
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
R. J. Verkes
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
G. Fernández
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Department for Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
*
*Address for correspondence: G. van Wingen, Ph.D., Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Background

Depressed individuals demonstrate a poorer ability to recognize the emotions of others, which could contribute to difficulties in interpersonal behaviour. This emotion recognition deficit appears related to the depressive state and is particularly pronounced when emotions are labelled semantically. Here, we investigated its neural basis by comparing emotion recognition processing between depressed, recovered and healthy individuals.

Method

Medication-naive patients with a first major depressive episode, medication-free patients who had recovered from a first episode, and a group of matched healthy individuals participated. They were requested to identify the emotion of angry and fearful face stimuli, either by matching them to other emotional faces on a perceptual basis or by matching them to a semantic label, while their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

The depressed individuals performed worse than recovered and healthy individuals on the emotion-labelling but not the emotion-matching task. The labelling deficit was related to increased recruitment of the right amygdala, left inferior frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex.

Conclusions

Deficits in semantic labelling of negative emotions are related to increased activation in specific brain regions and these abnormalities are mood state-dependent. These results indicate that accessing semantic knowledge about negative information triggers increased amygdala and left inferior frontal gyrus processing, which subsequently impairs task-relevant behaviour. We propose that this may reflect the activation of negative schemas.

Keywords

AmygdalaemotionfMRIMDDrecognition
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 41 , Issue 7 , July 2011 , pp. 1397 - 1405
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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