Amygdala hyperactivation in untreated depressed individuals

• Published in: Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging Vol. 173; no. 2; pp. 158 - 161
• Main Authors: Peluso, Marco A.M, Glahn, David C, Matsuo, Koji, Monkul, E. Serap, Najt, Pablo, Zamarripa, Frank, Li, Jinqi, Lancaster, Jack L, Fox, Peter T, Gao, Jia-Hong, Soares, Jair C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shannon Elsevier Ireland Ltd 30-08-2009; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Amygdala; Amygdala - metabolism; Amygdala - physiopathology; Anger; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Depression; Depression - metabolism; Depression - physiopathology; Depressive disorder; Facial Expression; Fear; Female; Functional MRI; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical sciences; Mood disorders; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Radiology; Functional MRI; Amygdala; Facial expression; Depressive disorder; Mood disorder; Human; Affect affectivity; Central nervous system; Depression; Basal ganglion; Emotion emotionality; Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; Encephalon; Medical imagery; Face; Amygdaloid nucleus; Functional imaging
• ISSN: 0925-4927; 1872-7506
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2009.03.006

Abstract The amygdala participates in the detection and control of affective states, and has been proposed to be a site of dysfunction in affective disorders. To assess amygdala processing in individuals with unipolar depression, we applied a functional MRI (fMRI) paradigm previously shown to be sensitive to amygdala function. Fourteen individuals with untreated DSM-IV major depression and 15 healthy subjects were studied using fMRI with a standardized emotion face recognition task. Voxel-level data sets were subjected to a multiple-regression analysis, and functionally defined regions of interest (ROI), including bilateral amygdala, were analyzed with MANOVA. Pearson correlation coefficients between amygdala activation and HAM-D score also were performed. While both depressed and healthy groups showed increased amygdala activity when viewing emotive faces compared to geometric shapes, patients with unipolar depression showed relatively more activity than healthy subjects, particularly on the left. Positive Pearson correlations between amygdala activation and HAM-D score were found for both left and right ROIs in the patient group. This study provides in vivo imaging evidence to support the hypothesis of abnormal amygdala functioning in depressed individuals.