Open AccessTask and Resting-State fMRI Reveal Altered Salience Responses to Positive Stimuli in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder
Author(s) -
Yang Yang,
Kazuyuki Imamura,
Shengfu Lu,
Mi Li,
Hu Zhou,
Huaizhou Li,
Yang Xia,
Wan Zhang,
Gang Wang,
Bin Hu,
Kuncheng Li
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0155092
Subject(s) - resting state fmri , major depressive disorder , salience (neuroscience) , functional magnetic resonance imaging , neuroscience , psychology , functional connectivity , default mode network , medicine , audiology , clinical psychology , cognition
Altered brain function in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) has been repeatedly demonstrated by task-based and resting-state studies, respectively. However, less is known concerning whether overlapped abnormalities in functional activities across modalities exist in MDD patients. To find out the answer, we implemented an fMRI experiment and collected both task and resting-state data from 19 MDD patients and 19 matched, healthy, controls. A distraction paradigm involving emotionally valenced pictures was applied to induce affective responses in subjects. As a result, concurrent deficits were found in arousing activation during a positive task in both the reward circuit and salience network (SN) that is composed of the dorsal part of anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and bilateral anterior insulae (AI) in only the MDD group. Subsequent amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and functional connectivity analyses based on resting-state data exhibited consistent alterations in the bilateral AI of MDD patients, and indicated patients’ difficulties in regulating the balance between central executive network (CEN) and default mode network (DMN) due to altered connectivity among the CEN, DMN, and SN. Our findings provide new evidence demonstrating impaired salience processing and resulting alterations in responses to positive stimuli in MDD patients. Furthermore, brain abnormalities synchronized across functional states in MDD patients can be evidenced by a combination of task and resting-state fMRI analyses.