Gray Matter Abnormalities of Orbitofrontal Cortex and Striatum in Drug-Naïve Adult Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Objective: This study examined whether obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients have gray matter abnormalities in regions related to executive function, and whether such abnormalities are associated with impaired executive function. Methods: Multiple scales were administered to 27 first-episode drug-naïve OCD patients and 29 healthy controls. Comprehensive brain morphometric indicators of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and three striatum areas (caudate, putamen, and pallidum) were determined. Hemisphere lateralization index was calculated for each region of interest. Correlations between lateralization index and psychological variables were examined in OCD group. Results: The OCD group had greater local gyrification index for the right OFC and greater gray matter volumes of the bilateral putamen and left pallidum than healthy controls. They also had weaker left hemisphere superiority for local gyrification index of the OFC and gray matter volume of the putamen, but stronger left hemisphere superiority for gray matter volume of the pallidum. Patients' lateralization index for local gyrification index of the OFC correlated negatively with Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and Dysexecutive Questionnaire scores, respectively. Conclusion: Structural abnormalities of the bilateral putamen, left pallidum, and right OFC may underlie OCD pathology. Abnormal lateralization in OCD may contribute to the onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and impaired executive function.

The characteristics of affective intensity and cognitive emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective To examine the characteristics of affective intensity and cognitive emotion regulation in subjects with borderline personality disorder ( BPD) . Methods The BPD subscale of personal-ity disorder questionnaire( PDQ-4+) was used to assess the BPD symptoms,the short affective intensity scale (SAIS) and cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ) were used to measure affect intensity and cognitive emotion regulation strategy,respectively. 765 subjects with BPD and 776 healthy controls were se-lected. The independent-samples t test was used to analyze the differences between BPD group and controls and logistic regression analysis was used to examine the related factors affecting the BPD. Results Com-pared with the control group(negative intensity:(3.08±0.66),negative coping dimension:(37.20±5.94), BPD group got higher scores in negative intensity((3.88±0.74), t=22.29, P0.8)and negative coping dimension((44.77±6.36), t=24.16, P0.8). The logistic regression anal-ysis showed that negative intensity(B=1.38,Exp(B)=3.97,95%CI for EXP(B):3.15~5.00, P<0.01) and negative cognitive regulations strategy(B=0.19,Exp(B)=1.21,95% CI:1.18-1.25, P<0.01) could affect the prevalence of BPD. Conclusion Subjects with BPD traits have more significant negative affective inten-sity and tend to use negative cognitive regulations strategy.

Event-related potentials of non-mediated obsessive-compulsive disorder patients in an emotional Stroop task / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective To study the difference of attentional bias towards general negative words between non-mediated obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and healthy controls.Methods Event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from 26 non-mediated OCD patients and 24 normal controls while they performed an emotional Stroop task.Results Compared to healthy controls,OCD patients showed significantly longer reaction time (OCD:(467 ± 14.88) ms,Controls:(409.65 ± 15.49) ms,P＜ 0.01),and had significantly larger P2 and P3 amplitude to all three types of words (P2 amplitude:OCD:(10.41±0.49) μV,Controls:(8.89±0.48) μV,P＜0.05;P3 amplitude:(10.04±0.68) μV,Controls:(7.68±0.67) μV,P＜0.05).In addition,the P2 peak latency of the frontal area in OCD patients was significantly longer than that in healthy controls(OCD:(190.09±4.71) ms,Controls:(179.60±4.72) ms,P＜0.05).Conclusion Current findings suggest that OCD patients are characterized by a general attentional inhibition deficit but not an attentional bias to the negative words.

Elevated amygdala activity to negative faces in young adults with early onset major depressive disorder.

Abnormalities in amygdala activity have been implicated in adolescents and older adults with major depressive disorder (MDD), but few studies have focused on young adults with early-onset MDD. In this study, we measured amygdala activity in 27 young adults with early-onset MDD and 25 healthy controls (HC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an emotional processing task. Both groups showed significant bilateral activation within the amygdala to threat-related facial expressions. In the matching face task, the activations of the left amygdala, thalamus, prefrontal and temporal cortex were significantly greater while the activation of the right prefrontal was significantly lower for the MDD group compared with the HC group. For the MDD group, there was a significant positive correlation between the activity of the amygdala and scores on the Chinese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Overall, our findings suggest that young adults with early-onset MDD may be characterized by abnormalities in nodes along the fronto-limbic pathways when facing threat-related facial expression.

Do the early attentional components of ERPs reflect attentional bias in depression? It depends on the stimulus presentation time.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to utilize behavioral and electrophysiological data to investigate whether depressed patients show an attentional bias in a task that allows for explicit insight into the time course of selective attention processes. METHODS: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from 24 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 25 never-depressed individuals (ND) during a dot-probe task, using pairs of affectively valenced pictures as cues. Cue presentation time was either 100 ms or 500 ms. RESULTS: When the cue presentation time was 500 ms, bias scores for positive-neutral picture pairs (POS-NEU) were negative for the MDD group and positive for the ND group which means ND individuals were able to successfully select positive information. These behavioral effects were supported by ERP results. In the ND group, at the right parietal-occipital region, P1 amplitude during valid POS-NEU pairs was significantly larger than that during invalid POS-NEU pairs; this pattern did not appear in the MDD group. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that MDD patients are characterized by a deficit in protection bias, meaning that these participants cannot avoid attending to negative information in their environment, but only when negative stimuli are presented for a sufficient period of time. SIGNIFICANCE: Attentional bias is modulated by duration of emotional pictures presentation in depression.

Characteristics of Affective Priming Effect in Alexithymics / 中国心理卫生杂志

Objective: Alexithymics have difficulty in identifying and describing feelings to other people. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of affective priming effects of alexithymics and examine their deficit of emotional automatic processing. Method: 23 alexithymics and 23 non-alexithymics were screened out in university students, they were required to judge whether the target pictures were positive or negative as soon as possible while prime pictures were supraliminally or subliminally presented. The correct rates and the mean response latencies were subjected to ANOVA with repeated measures. Result:In both supraliminal and subliminal affective priming tasks, the mean response latencies were significantly longer for affectively incongruent trials, as compared to those for affectively congruent and control trials. The correct rates for affectively incongruent trials were the lowest.Subjects were relatively slower to respond to positive target pictures than to negative target pictures(96.9%/95.3%,97.6%/95.8%).In subliminal affective priming task, there were no differences of correct rates and latencies between alexithymics and nonalexithymics. In supraliminal priming task, the latency of alexithymics was longer than that of nonalexithymics (536.3ms/496.4ms). Conclusion: Alexithymics have deficit in automatic processing for emotional information they are aware of, but not for those can not be aware.