Brain activity shows continued sensitivity to negative cues after depression recovery

Brain activity shows continued sensitivity to negative cues after depression recovery

Researchers have found that even after recovery, individuals who previously experienced depression may retain heightened sensitivity to negative cues and face challenges regulating responses to potential punishment. The results of the new study inBiological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimagingpublished by Elsevier, could lead to better ways to identify people who are relapsing and develop targeted interventions to improve long-term recovery and prevent future episodes of depression.

Depression is characterized by high relapse rates, with up to 80% of individuals experiencing a return of symptoms within five years, showing that recovery does not always guarantee long-term resilience. To improve prevention, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to an individual's vulnerability to relapse is required.

Lead Investigator Henricus G. Ruhé, MD, PhD, Radboud University Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, and the DONDERS Institute for Brain Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen, Netherlands says.“TThe high relapse rates observed in depression suggest that there must be ongoing processes in the brain that continue to make individuals vulnerable to future episodes even after symptoms have improved.Previous research has shown that people with depression often remain sensitive even after remission. This led us to focus on aversive learning – a type of Pavlovian classical conditioning in which a person learns to avoid a stimulus or behavior by associating it with an unpleasant outcome. We focused on the habenula – a small region of the brain involved in processing negative feedback. We wanted to find out whether abnormalities in this system persist after recovery from depressive symptoms. “

For this study, researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) to assess brain activity during an aversive learning task in 36 patients with recurrent depression and 27 healthy controls. Participants learned associations between an image and an unpleasant bitter taste while undergoing fMRI scanning.

Imaging revealed evidence that individuals with remitty depression showed increased habenula activity, specifically in anticipation of punishment, as well as reduced connectivity between havenula and the ventral tegmental area, a key midbrain nucleus responsible for producing the reward neurotransmitter dopamine and an area regulated by habenula activity. These patterns suggest increased sensitivity to negative cues and a reduced ability to regulate responses to potential punishment, even after reflecting on the symptoms.

Editor-in-Chief ofBiological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and NeuroimagingCameron S. Carter, MD, University of California Irvine, Graduate,"While much is known about how depression affects brain function in active illness, we have little understanding of whether these changes persist after recovery. This study shows that even when individuals do not have obvious symptoms of depression, they may still exhibit an increased sensitivity to negative cues, which helps reinforce the violations in a better way to prevent the influences that need to be corrected.

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