ERP evidence for a sex-specific Stroop effect in emotional speech

The present study investigated the interaction of emotional prosody and word valence during emotional comprehension in men and women. In a prosody-word interference task, participants listened to positive, neutral, and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral, and angry prosody. Participants were asked to rate word valence while ignoring emotional prosody, or vice versa. Congruent stimuli were responded faster and more accurately as compared to incongruent emotional stimuli. This behavioral effect was more salient for the word valence task than for the prosodic task and was comparable between men and women. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a smaller N400 amplitude for congruent as compared to emotionally incongruent stimuli. This ERP effect, however, was significant only for the word valence judgment and only for female listeners. The present data suggest that the word valence judgment was more difficult and more easily influenced by task-irrelevant emotional information than the prosodic task in both men and women. Furthermore, although emotional prosody and word valence may have a similar influence on an emotional judgment in both sexes, ERPs indicate sex differences in the underlying processing. Women, but not men, show an interaction between prosody and word valence during a semantic processing stage.     

Functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex in medication-naive individuals with major depressive disorder

Background

Convergent evidence suggests dysfunction within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala, important components of a neural system that subserves emotional processing, in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Abnormalities in this system in the left hemisphere and during processing of negative emotional stimuli are especially implicated. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate amygdala–PFC functional connectivity during emotional face processing in medication-naive individuals with MDD.

Methods

Individuals with MDD and healthy controls underwent fMRI scanning while processing 3 types of emotional face stimuli. We compared the strength of functional connectivity from the amygdala between the MDD and control groups.

Results

Our study included 28 individuals with MDD and 30 controls. Decreased amygdala–left rostral PFC (rPFC) functional connectivity was observed in the MDD group compared with controls for the fear condition (p < 0.05, corrected). No significant differences were found in amygdala connectivity to any cerebral regions between the MDD and control groups for the happy or neutral conditions.

Limitations

All participants with MDD were experiencing acute episodes, therefore the findings could not be generalized to the entire MDD population.

Conclusion

Medication-naive individuals with MDD showed decreased amygdala–left rPFC functional connectivity in response to negative emotional stimuli, suggesting that abnormalities in amygdala–left rPFC neural circuitry responses to negative emotional stimuli might play an important role in the pathophysiology of MDD.     

The impact of verbal framing on brain activity evoked by emotional images

Emotional stimuli generally command more brain processing resources than non-emotional stimuli, but the magnitude of this effect is subject to voluntary control. Cognitive reappraisal represents one type of emotion regulation that can be voluntarily employed to modulate responses to emotional stimuli. Here, the late positive potential (LPP), a specific event-related brain potential (ERP) component, was measured in response to neutral, positive and negative images while participants performed an evaluative categorization task. One experimental group adopted a "negative frame" in which images were categorized as negative or not. The other adopted a "positive frame" in which the exact same images were categorized as positive or not. Behavioral performance confirmed compliance with random group assignment, and peak LPP amplitude to negative images was affected by group membership: brain responses to negative images were significantly reduced in the "positive frame" group. This suggests that adopting a more positive appraisal frame can modulate brain activity elicited by negative stimuli in the environment.     

Electrophysiological correlates of semantic processing during encoding of neutral and emotional pictures in patients with ADHD

The current study investigated the relevance of semantic processing and stimulus salience for memory performance in young ADHD patients and healthy control participants. 18 male ADHD patients and 15 healthy control children and adolescents participated in an ERP study during a visual memory paradigm with two different encoding tasks requiring either perceptual or semantic processing of neutral and emotional pictures. ADHD patients and healthy controls both showed a more negative slow-wave in response to task cues signalling semantic as compared to perceptual stimulus processing. In contrast to ADHD patients, healthy control children showed a larger increase in memory performance for deeply processed neutral pictures which was accompanied by a more positive mid-latency ERP component (so-called P300) after stimulus onset. Our results demonstrate that ADHD patients succeeded in allocating neural resources in preparation of different task demands. However, this increase in preparatory activation to the semantic task cue did not suffice to support successful processing and encoding of neutral stimuli to the same extent as in healthy controls. These findings provide evidence that ADHD patients show deficits in translating pre-stimulus mobilization of neural resources to successful memory formation in the absence of salient stimulus material.     

Variation in the corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) gene influences fMRI signal responses during emotional stimulus processing

The corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) system coordinates neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to stress and has been implicated in the development of major depressive disorder (MDD). Recent reports suggest that GG-homozygous individuals of a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs110402) in the CRH receptor 1 (CRHR1) gene show behavioral and neuroendocrine evidence of stress vulnerability. The present study explores whether those observations extend to the neuronal processing of emotional stimuli in humans. CRHR1 was genotyped in 83 controls and a preliminary sample of 16 unmedicated patients with MDD who completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan while viewing blocks of positive, negative, and neutral words. In addition, potential mediating factors such as early life stress, sex, personality traits, and negative memory bias were examined. Robust differences in blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal were found in healthy controls (A allele carriers > GG-homozygotes) in the right middle temporal/angular gyrus while subjects were viewing negative versus neutral words. Among GG-homozygotes, BOLD signal in the subgenual cingulate was greater in MDD participants (n = 9) compared with controls (n = 33). Conversely, among A-carriers, BOLD signal was smaller in MDD (n = 7) compared with controls (n = 50) in the hypothalamus, bilateral amygdala, and left nucleus accumbens. Early life stress, personality traits, and levels of negative memory bias were associated with brain activity depending on genotype. Results from healthy controls and a preliminary sample of MDD participants show that CRHR1 single nucleotide polymorphism rs110402 moderates neural responses to emotional stimuli, suggesting a potential mechanism of vulnerability for the development of MDD.     

抑郁症患者汉语情绪词阈下的Stroop效应事件相关电位

背景：抑郁症患者负性认知偏差与情绪信息加工的关系是一个重要的研究课题。情绪Stroop测验常用于评估情绪加工特点,而情绪词阈下Stroop刺激模式也常用于精神病学临床研究。 目的：本研究采用阈下汉语情绪词Stroop刺激范式来探讨抑郁症患者异常情绪信息加工的事件相关电位(ERP)效应。 设计,时间和地点：随机对照设计,时间为2007年8月至2008年3月,地点在中南大学湘雅二医院。 研究对象：首发抑郁症患者26例,符合DSM-IV抑郁症诊断标准,无脑部疾病、躯体疾病,未进行电休克治疗和抗抑郁药物治疗。健康对照组24例。两组在年龄、性别和教育水平方面无差异,均为右利手。 方法：采用阈下汉语情绪词Stroop刺激范式,要求被试对呈现200ms的红色或蓝色方块进行反应,而汉语情绪词阈下启动刺激为20ms。主要分析行为学和ERP数据。 主要测试指标：反应时和ERP成分的潜伏期和波幅。参照ERP平均波幅图以及其它研究,主要分析N270 (220~300ms)成分和N400 (380~450ms)成分的潜伏期和波幅。 结果：行为数据显示两组正确率之间无显著性差异,抑郁症组反应时比正常对照组延长,尤其是负性词与中性词(p<0.01)。重复测量方差分析表明,N270成分的波幅有词性和电极的主效应(p<0.01)以及词性和电极的交互效应(p<0.05);两组波幅大小顺序均为正性词>负性词>中性词。组别、词性差异波地形图显示差异主要分布在额区和左侧顶颞区。N400成分的波幅有词性和电极的主效应(p<0.01),潜伏期显示电极的主效应(p<0.01)以及电极和组别的交互效应(p<0.01);两组波幅大小顺序均为正性词>负性词>中性词,而且两组之间的三种情绪词波幅之间有显著性差异(p<0.01)。组别、词性差异波地形图显示差异主要分布在左右额区、中央区和左侧顶颞区。 结论：抑郁症患者执行阈下汉语情绪词Stroop刺激作业时表现了异常的情绪信息加工特征,以及对汉语情绪词三种词性进行语义激活时与正常组相比表现为不同的ERP时程效应。研究结果支持我们提出的正负性情绪平行神经模型。     

More excited for negative facial expressions in depression: Evidence from an event-related potential study

Objective

This study aims to investigate the intensity evaluation of social stimuli in depression.

Methods

Twenty-four never-disordered control participants (NC), 24 sub-clinically depressed individuals and 24 participants diagnosed with a current major depressive disorder (MDD) were recruited. All participants completed an emotional intensity evaluation task, in which they were required to judge the intensity of the facial expressions by pressing response keys, with the event-related potential (ERP) being recorded during the process.

Results

The MDD participants had higher intensity scores for sad faces compared with the NC group, longer reaction times (RTs) for all faces compared with other groups and higher P1 and P2 amplitude for sad faces compared with other faces. The sub-clinically depressed individuals had lower intensity scores for happy and neutral faces compared with other groups, longer RTs for happy faces compared with other faces and higher P1 and P2 amplitudes for happy faces compared with sad faces.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that the MDD participants are more excited for negative facial expressions, while the sub-clinically depressed individuals might have a disturbed perception for happy stimuli, which suggests a different cognitive pattern for facial expressions between MDD and sub-clinical depression. Moreover, the deep perception for sad faces is correlated with increased suicidal ideation.

Significance

The intensity effect of social stimuli (facial expressions) was observed in sub-clinically and clinically depressed (MDD) individuals simultaneously, which might suggest that the more excited perception for negative facial expressions is a stable cognitive vulnerability possibly associated with the occurrence or recurrence of depression.     

Differential effects of emotional content on event-related potentials in word recognition memory

The aim of this study was to delineate the influence of the emotional content of stimuli to be remembered on the recognition performance of normal subjects by means of the event-related potential (ERP) technique. When words are presented repeatedly, brain responses to repeated and recognized items are characterized by a more positive waveform, referred to as "old/new effect". Words judged for their emotional connotation ("negative", "positive" and "neutral") were presented successively on a video monitor to subjects, who had the task to indicate whether a given word occurred for the first ("new") or second ("old") time within the list by pressing one of two buttons. For each word category, the ERPs of the old words were more positive compared to those of the new items from about 250 ms after stimulus. The old/new effect was significantly enhanced for the negative and positive items compared to the neutral stimuli between 450 and 650 ms after stimulus pointing to a significant influence of the emotional content of words on verbal memory processes. This paradigm appears to be feasible to investigate interactions of emotion and cognition in psychiatric patients.     

Tracing the time course of emotion perception: the impact of stimulus physics and semantics on gesture processing

Numerous event-related brain potential (ERP) studies reveal the differential processing of emotional and neutral stimuli. Yet, it is an ongoing debate to what extent the ERP components found in previous research are sensitive to physical stimulus characteristics or emotional meaning. This study manipulated emotional meaning and stimulus orientation to disentangle the impact of stimulus physics and semantics on emotional stimulus processing. Negative communicative hand gestures of Insult were contrasted with neutral control gestures of Allusion to manipulate emotional meaning. An elementary physical manipulation of visual processing was implemented by presenting these stimuli vertically and horizontally. The results showed dissociable effects of stimulus meaning and orientation on the sequence of ERP components. Effects of orientation were pronounced in the P1 and N170 time frames and attenuated during later stages. Emotional meaning affected the P1, evincing a distinct topography to orientation effects. Although the N170 was not modulated by emotional meaning, the early posterior negativity and late positive potential components replicated previous findings with larger potentials elicited by the Insult gestures. These data suggest that the brain processes different attributes of an emotional picture in parallel and that a coarse semantic appreciation may already occur during relatively early stages of emotion perception.     

Implicit and explicit memory processes in panic patients as reflected in behavioral and electrophysiological measures

Implicit and explicit memory processes for panic-relevant and neutral word stimuli were examined in 16 panic patients and 16 healthy participants matched for sex, age, and education, using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. In the study phase, panic-relevant and neutral words were presented and the level of processing was varied by requiring either shallow (orthographic) or deeper (syntactic) processing. Implicit memory was tested with a lexical decision task, explicit memory with a recognition task. Panic patients and healthy participants did not differ in behavioral (response time) or event-related brain potential (ERP) measures of implicit memory. However, panic patients deviated from healthy participants in the recognition test, an explicit memory test. Although recognition of panic words was overall worse compared to neutral words, panic patients compared to healthy participants exhibited enhanced discrimination scores and faster reaction times for panic words. The level of processing manipulation had comparable effects on patients and healthy participants. While neither behavioral nor electrophysiological measures provided evidence for an implicit memory bias in panic patients, behavioral measures confirmed an explicit memory bias in panic patients for panic-relevant stimuli.     

Prefrontal cortical response to emotional faces in individuals with major depressive disorder in remission

Abnormalities in the response of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to negative emotional stimuli have been reported in acutely depressed patients. However, there is a paucity of studies conducted in unmedicated individuals with major depressive disorder in remission (rMDD) to assess whether these are trait abnormalities. To address this issue, 19 medication-free rMDD individuals and 20 healthy comparison (HC) participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing an implicit emotion processing task in which they labeled the gender of faces depicting negative (fearful), positive (happy) and neutral facial expressions. The rMDD and HC groups were compared using a region-of-interest approach for two contrasts: fear vs. neutral and happy vs. neutral. Relative to HC, rMDD showed reduced activation in left OFC and DLPFC to fearful (vs. neutral) faces. Right DLPFC activation to fearful (vs. neutral) faces in the rMDD group showed a significant positive correlation with duration of euthymia. The findings support deficits in left OFC and DLPFC responses to negative emotional stimuli during euthymic periods of MDD, which may reflect trait markers of the illness or a 'scar' due to previous depression. Recovery may also be associated with compensatory increases in right DLPFC functioning.     

The influence of emotional words on sentence processing: Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence

Whereas most previous studies on emotion in language have focussed on single words, we investigated the influence of the emotional valence of a word on the syntactic and semantic processes unfolding during sentence comprehension, by means of event-related brain potentials (ERP). Experiment 1 assessed how positive, negative, and neutral adjectives that could be either syntactically correct or incorrect (violation of number agreement) modulate syntax-sensitive ERP components. The amplitude of the left anterior negativity (LAN) to morphosyntactic violations increased in negative and decreased in positive words in comparison to neutral words. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented but positive, negative, and neutral adjectives could be either semantically correct or anomalous given the sentence context. The N400 to semantic anomalies was not significantly affected by the valence of the violating word. However, positive words in a sentence seemed to influence semantic correctness decisions, also triggering an apparent N400 reduction irrespective of the correctness value of the word. Later linguistic processes, as reflected in the P600 component, were unaffected in either experiment. Overall, our results indicate that emotional valence in a word impacts the syntactic and semantic processing of sentences, with differential effects as a function of valence and domain.     

Processing words with emotional connotation: an FMRI study of time course and laterality in rostral frontal and retrosplenial cortices

Responses of rostral frontal and retrosplenial cortices to the emotional significance of words were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty-six strongly right-handed participants engaged in a language task that alternated between silent word generation to categories with positive, negative, or neutral emotional connotation and a baseline task of silent repetition of emotionally neutral words. Activation uniquely associated with word generation to categories with positive or negative versus neutral emotional connotation occurred bilaterally in rostral frontal and retrosplenial cortices. Furthermore, the time courses of activity in these areas differed, indicating that they subserve different functions in processing the emotional connotation of words. Namely, the retrosplenial cortex appears to be involved in evaluating the emotional salience of information from external sources, whereas the rostral frontal cortex also plays a role in internal generation of words with emotional connotation. In both areas, activity associated with positive or negative emotional connotation was more extensive in the left hemisphere than the right, regardless of valence, presumably due to the language demands of word generation. The present findings localize specific areas in the brain that are involved in processing emotional meaning of words within the brain's distributed semantic system. In addition, time course analysis reveals diverging mechanisms in anterior and posterior cortical areas during processing of words with emotional significance.     

Attentional and memory bias in persecutory delusions and depression

BACKGROUND: Previous research has indicated that persecutory delusions and depression may share similar cognitive biases at implicit levels of processing, but differentiate at explicit levels, supporting the theory that paranoia may have a protective function against underlying negative schemata. The study aimed to investigate attentional bias and both implicit and explicit memory biases for personally salient and standardised emotional stimuli in persecutory delusions and depression. SAMPLING: 36 participants, with 12 in each group, were interviewed in order to generate personally salient stimuli to be employed within the cognitive tests. Standardised emotional stimuli were additionally employed as a control. Participants completed two probe detection tasks, one including personally salient stimuli and one including standard emotional stimuli. Memory for the stimuli presented in this task was assessed by a free recall task (explicit memory) followed by a word completion task (implicit memory). RESULTS: On an implicit memory task, both the deluded and depressed groups displayed comparable retrieval of positive and negative words. However, on the explicit memory task, the depressed group demonstrated a bias for negative stimuli, whereas the deluded group demonstrated a bias for positive stimuli. The groups did not demonstrate an attentional bias for personally salient information. However, an attentional bias for standardised emotional stimuli was found in the depressed group, although this was not specific to either negative or positive stimuli. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that depression and persecutory delusions may share similar patterns of processing at an implicit level but differentiate at the explicit level, which may be indicative of cognitive avoidance of threatening stimuli in psychosis. However, this does not seem to be a feature of automatic attentional processes in people with persecutory delusions. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Deficient inhibition of return for emotional faces in depression

Depression is a commonly-occurred mental disorder. Researchers have highlighted the attentional bias of depressive disorders, although results have been mixed. The cue-target task has often been used to explore attentional bias; a particular phenomenon revealed by such studies is the inhibition of return (IOR). However, cue-target task has seldom been used so far in the study of depressed patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate the IOR phenomenon in depressed individuals in cue-target task using emotional faces as cues.Control participants who had never suffered depression (NC), participants who had experienced at least two depressive episodes in their lives but were currently remitted (RMD), and participants diagnosed with a current major depressive disorder (MDD), were recruited using BDI, BAI, HDRS and DSM-IV as tools. Seventeen participants in each group completed a cue-target task in a behavioral experiment that comprised three kinds of experimental condition, two cue types and four face types. Each participant also completed a simpler cue-target task in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. In cue-target task, a target appeared after a cue and the participant responded to its location.In the behavioral experiment, it was found that when the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 14 ms, the NC and RMD participants had IOR effects for all faces and MDD participants for angry and sad faces. When the SOA was 250 ms, all three groups all had cue validity for sad faces but the effect was much more marked for the MDD group. When the SOA was 750 ms, the NC participants had an IOR effect for sad faces, the RMD participants had cue validity for angry, happy and sad faces, and the MDD participants had cue validity for sad faces and an IOR effect for angry faces. In the ERP experiment, the NC participants showed bigger P3 amplitude for happy cue compared with the other groups, smaller P1 amplitude for happy faces in the invalid cue condition than for other faces, smaller P1 amplitude for sad faces in the valid cue condition than for happy faces, bigger P3 amplitude for happy faces in the valid cue condition compared with MDD participants, and bigger P3 amplitude for sad faces in the invalid cue condition compared with other groups. The RMD participants had larger P3 amplitude for sad cue than for other faces, larger P3 amplitude for happy faces in the valid cue condition compared with MDD participants, and smaller P3 amplitude for sad faces in the invalid cue condition compared with NC participants. The MDD participants had larger P1 amplitude for sad cue compared with other groups, larger P3 amplitude for sad cue than for other face cues, smaller P3 amplitude for sad faces in the invalid cue condition compared with NC participants, and smaller P3 amplitude for happy faces in the valid cue condition compared with other groups.It can be concluded that the MDD participants had cue validity and deficient IOR for negative stimuli. The deficient inhibition of negative stimuli renders them unable to eliminate the interference of negative stimuli and causes the maintenance and development of depression. The RMD participants had cue validity and deficient IOR for both positive and negative stimuli, which enables them to perceive positive and negative stimuli sufficiently and to maintain emotional balance.     

Influence of Emotional Processing on Working Memory in Schizophrenia

Research on emotional processing in schizophrenia suggests relatively intact subjective responses to affective stimuli “in the moment.” However, neuroimaging evidence suggests diminished activation in brain regions associated with emotional processing in schizophrenia. We asked whether given a more vulnerable cognitive system in schizophrenia, individuals with this disorder would show increased or decreased modulation of working memory (WM) as a function of the emotional content of stimuli compared with healthy control subjects. In addition, we examined whether higher anhedonia levels were associated with a diminished impact of emotion on behavioral and brain activation responses. In the present study, 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 32 healthy individuals completed blocks of a 2-back WM task in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning session. Blocks contained faces displaying either only neutral stimuli or neutral and emotional stimuli (happy or fearful faces), randomly intermixed and occurring both as targets and non-targets. Both groups showed higher accuracy but slower reaction time for negative compared to neutral stimuli. Individuals with schizophrenia showed intact amygdala activity in response to emotionally evocative stimuli, but demonstrated altered dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and hippocampal activity while performing an emotionally loaded WM-task. Higher levels of social anhedonia were associated with diminished amygdala responses to emotional stimuli and increased DLPFC activity in individuals with schizophrenia. Emotional arousal may challenge dorsal-frontal control systems, which may have both beneficial and detrimental influences. Our findings suggest that disturbances in emotional processing in schizophrenia relate to alterations in emotion-cognition interactions rather than to the perception and subjective experience of emotion per se.     

Can't shake that feeling: event-related fMRI assessment of sustained amygdala activity in response to emotional information in depressed individuals.

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests that depressed individuals engage in prolonged elaborative processing of emotional information. A computational neural network model of emotional information processing suggests this process involves sustained amygdala activity in response to processing negative features of information. This study examined whether brain activity in response to emotional stimuli was sustained in depressed individuals, even following subsequent distracting stimuli. METHODS: Seven depressed and 10 never-depressed individuals were studied using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging during alternating 15-sec emotional processing (valence identification) and non-emotional processing (Sternberg memory) trials. Amygdala regions were traced on high-resolution structural scans and co-registered to the functional data. The time course of activity in these areas during emotional and non-emotional processing trials was examined. RESULTS: During emotional processing trials, never-depressed individuals displayed amygdalar responses to all stimuli, which decayed within 10 sec. In contrast, depressed individuals displayed sustained amygdala responses to negative words that lasted throughout the following non-emotional processing trials (25 sec later). The difference in sustained amygdala activity to negative and positive words was moderately related to self-reported rumination. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that depression is associated with sustained activity in brain areas responsible for coding emotional features.     

Neural correlates of emotional working memory in patients with mild cognitive impairment

Emotional stimuli can have beneficial effects on memory in healthy aged subjects and partly on patients with dementia. So far, no experimental study has explored the effects of memory for emotional stimuli in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a concept that describes a transitional state between normal aging and dementia. The present fMRI study explored working memory for emotional stimuli in 16 patients with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and 16 healthy aged participants. Subjects performed an n-back task (2-back) with neutral, positive, and negative emotional pictures. The analysis focused on target processing. Results showed that groups did not differ in working memory performance. In healthy aged participants emotional targets had no significant impact on working memory. In patients with aMCI a negativity bias was observed, indicating that negative targets were better remembered compared to neutral and positive targets. Regarding fMRI results, both groups showed an increase in functional activity in prefrontal and lateral parietal brain regions associated with target processing. As a key result, we observed significant group by emotion interaction effects in the precuneus. Healthy aged participants showed a signal decrease in the left precuneus for positive compared to neutral targets. The precuneus deactivation in healthy aged participants may indicate a disengagement of self-referential processes towards task-related processes. Patients with aMCI revealed a signal increase in the right precuneus for negative compared to neutral targets. This increase in precuneus activity, combined with a behavioural facilitation effect, may indicate a mechanism to compensate disease related processes in aMCI.     

Negative bias effects during audiovisual emotional processing in major depression disorder

Aberrant affective neural processing and negative emotional bias are trait‐marks of major depression disorders (MDDs). However, most research on biased emotional perception in depression has only focused on unimodal experimental stimuli, the neural basis of potentially biased emotional processing of multimodal inputs remains unclear. Here, we addressed this issue by implementing an audiovisual emotional task during functional MRI scanning sessions with 37 patients with MDD and 37 gender‐, age‐ and education‐matched healthy controls. Participants were asked to distinguish laughing and crying sounds while being exposed to faces with different emotional valences as background. We combined general linear model and psychophysiological interaction analyses to identify abnormal local functional activity and integrative processes during audiovisual emotional processing in MDD patients. At the local neural level, MDD patients showed increased bias activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) while listening to negative auditory stimuli and concurrently processing visual facial expressions, along with decreased dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity in both the positive and negative visual facial conditions. At the network level, MDD exhibited significantly decreased connectivity in areas involved in automatic emotional processes and voluntary control systems during perception of negative stimuli, including the vmPFC, dlPFC, insula, as well as the subcortical regions of posterior cingulate cortex and striatum. These findings support a multimodal emotion dysregulation hypothesis for MDD by demonstrating that negative bias effects may be facilitated by the excessive ventral bottom‐up negative emotional influences along with incapability in dorsal prefrontal top‐down control system.     

Dysfunctional distracter inhibition and facilitation for sad faces in depressed individuals

Depression is a commonly occurring mental disorder, which is characterized by dysfunctional inhibition and facilitation for emotional stimuli. The aim of the present study was to investigate distracter inhibition and facilitation for emotional faces in depressed individuals in a negative affective priming task. Control participants who had never suffered from depression (NC), sub-clinically depressed participants, and participants diagnosed with a current major depressive disorder (MDD), Anxiety Inventory, the Hamilton Depression Rating Score were recruited using the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck and DSM-IV as tools. Twenty-four participants in each group completed a negative affective priming task. The main finding was that there were no significant differences among the three groups in the positive and negative priming effects of happy faces. However, there were significant differences for positive and negative priming effects of sad faces between each pair of groups, with the effects being lowest for MDD and highest for NC participants. It can be concluded that depressed individuals are characterized by enhanced facilitation and deficient inhibition for negative materials, which is a stable cognitive vulnerability risk, possibly associated with the occurrence of depression. There are differences in the cognitive dysfunction for negative stimuli between clinically depressed and sub-clinically depressed individuals.