Original articleActivity and Connectivity of Brain Mood Regulating Circuit in Depression: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Study
Section snippets
Subjects
Medication free unipolar depressed outpatients were recruited from the outpatient clinic at University Hospital, Indiana University School of Medicine and by advertisement. Healthy subjects matched for age, sex and ethnicity were also recruited via advertisement. All subjects took part after signing an informed consent form approved by the Investigational Review Board (IRB) at Indiana University School of Medicine. Both patients and subjects were paid $50 for screening and $50 for MRI scan.
Results
Seventeen depressed patients and 17 healthy subjects completed the fMRI scan. Results are presented for 15 depressed and 15 age, sex and ethnicity matched healthy subjects. One patient was excluded because she reported that she was unable to attend to the pictures during the scan. One healthy subject was excluded due to failure of the proper acquisition of fMRI data leading to a warped image. One patient and 1 healthy subject were excluded because there were no close matches in terms of age,
Discussion
Activation data from this study confirmed results from previous reports that depression is associated with increased activation of limbic regions such as the AMYG, PST, MTHAL, and insula. In this study, cortical components of the MRC such as the AMPFC, DLPFC and ACC also showed increased activation in response to negative versus neutral stimuli. Other fMRI studies have also reported increased activation of these areas to be related to evoked sadness in healthy subjects (Teasdale et al 1999) and
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