Increased Functional Connectivity Between Medulla and Inferior Parietal Cortex in Medication-Free Major Depressive Disorder

Frontiers in Neuroscience

卷:12

Kunhua Wu¹  Fengchun Wu²  Huawang Wu²  Shan Gao³  Lizhu Luo⁵  Jiaojian Wang⁵  Fengmei Lu⁵  Xiangchao Kong⁵  Yi Lu⁶ 

[1] Department of MRI, The First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, The Affiliated Hospital of Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China;

[2] Guangdong Engineering Technology Research Center for Translational Medicine of Mental Disorders, Guangzhou, China;

[3] School of Foreign Languages, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China;

[4] The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University (Guangzhou Huiai Hospital), Guangzhou, China;

[5] The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China;

[6] The Department of Medical Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China;

关键词: major depressive disorder;    resting-state functional connectivity;    brainstem;    subregions;    medulla;    inferior parietal cortex;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2018.00926

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Emerging evidence has documented the abnormalities of primary brain functions in major depressive disorder (MDD). The brainstem has shown to play an important role in regulating basic functions of the human brain, but little is known about its role in MDD, especially the roles of its subregions. To uncover this, the present study adopted resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging with fine-grained brainstem atlas in 23 medication-free MDD patients and 34 matched healthy controls (HC). The analysis revealed significantly increased functional connectivity of the medulla, one of the brainstem subregions, with the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in MDD patients. A positive correlation was further identified between the increased medulla-IPC functional connectivity and Hamilton anxiety scores. Functional characterization of the medulla and IPC using a meta-analysis revealed that both regions primarily participated in action execution and inhibition. Our findings suggest that increased medulla-IPC functional connectivity may be related to over-activity or abnormal control of negative emotions in MDD, which provides a new insight for the neurobiology of MDD.

【 授权许可】

Unknown