The passive recipient: Neural correlates of negative self-view in depression.

INTRODCTION: Previous studies have argued that people tend to isolate themselves from negative information. This tendency is modulated by the individual's role in social interaction, that is, as an initiative actor (e.g., "I hit Tom") or a passive recipient (e.g., "Paul hits me"). Depressed patients tend to focus on negative aspects of themselves and cope with situations passively. It is still an open question how the actor/recipient role affects the behavioral and neural responses to self in depression. METHODS: The present study adopted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to investigate behavioral and neural responses to self (as an actor/recipient) in depressed patients and the matched healthy controls when attributing negative events. RESULTS: Compared with healthy controls, depressed patients showed more self-attribution for negative events. Depressed patients showed increased brain activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) subsystem of the default mode network (DMN) when they played recipient role in self-related negative events. Activity of the dmPFC subsystem was negatively correlated with depressed patients' self-attribution for negative events in recipient condition. While decreased brain activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem was observed in depressed patients when they played the actor or recipient role in self-related negative events. Activity of the MTL subsystem was negatively correlated with depressed patients' reaction time when they played recipient role in selfrelated negative events. CONCLUSION: These results implicated that depressed patients manifested the negative self-view. Actor/recipient role affected their activation patterns in the DMN which were different from the healthy controls. The correlation between the abnormal brain activations of the DMN and the behavioral performances might manifest more easily when depressed patients played recipient role in negative events.

Static and dynamic functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex during resting-state predicts self-serving bias in depression.

Major depression disorder (MDD) is characterized by the lack of self-serving bias, which may inherently underlie the onset and maintenance of depression. Emerging neuroimaging evidences have indicated that the altered self-processing in MDD may be germane to the dysfunctional static resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Although static RSFC studies provide tremendous amounts of evidences on functional changes in depression, explorations of dynamic RSFC among the PFC and other brain regions may elucidate the temporal changes of neural activities associated with depression. To further explore the behavioral and neural correlates of self-serving bias, 21 depressed and 23 non-depressed individuals underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan and completed a self-serving bias task. Static and dynamic RSFC analyses were conducted for specific subregions of the PFC, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the ventral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex. Depressed patients showed an attenuated self-serving bias as compared with controls, and aberrant static and dynamic RSFC among these subregions of the PFC. In particular, the self-serving bias was associated with static dmPFC-to-OFC RSFC and dynamic vlPFC-to-OFC RSFC for MDD group. The aberrant RSFC of the PFC may serve as a predictor for self-serving bias in depression.

Decreased Intrinsic Functional Connectivity of the Salience Network in Drug-Naïve Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients have difficulty in switching between obsessive thought and compulsive behavior, which may be related to the dysfunction of the salience network (SN). However, little is known about the changes in intra- and inter- intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) of the SN in patients with OCD. In this study, we parceled the SN into 19 subregions and investigated iFC changes for each of these subregions in 40 drug-naïve patients with OCD and 40 healthy controls (HCs) using seed-based functional connectivity resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). We found that patients with OCD exhibited decreased iFC strength between subregions of the SN, as well as decreased inter-network connectivity between SN and DMN, and ECN. These findings highlight a specific alteration in iFC patterns associated with SN in patients with OCD and provide new insights into the dysfunctional brain organization of the SN in patients with OCD.