Neural Basis of the Emotional Conflict Processing in Major Depression: ERPs and Source Localization Analysis on the N450 and P300 Components

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Juan Rao¹  Xiaowei Li¹  Yanrong Hao¹  Jianxiu Li¹  Jing Zhu¹  Zhijie Ding²  Gangping Wang² 

[1] Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Wearable Computing, School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China;The Third People’s Hospital of Tianshui City, Tianshui, China;

关键词: major depressive disorder;    emotional conflict;    event-related potentials;    source localization;    standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography;    N450;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnhum.2018.00214

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Objects: Effective psychological function requires that cognition is not affected by task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in emotional conflict. Depression is mainly characterized as an emotional disorder. The object of this study is to reveal the behavioral and electrophysiological signature of emotional conflict processing in major depressive disorder (MDD) using event-related potentials (ERPs) and standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analysis.Method: We used a face–word Stroop task involving emotional faces while recording EEG (electroencephalography) in 20 patients with MDD and 20 healthy controls (HCs). And then ERPs were extracted and the corresponding brain sources were reconstructed using sLORETA.Results: Behaviorally, subjects with MDDs manifested significantly increased Stroop effect when examining the RT difference between happy incongruent trials and happy congruent trials, compared with HC subjects. ERP results exhibited that MDDs were characterized by the attenuated difference between P300 amplitude to sad congruent stimuli and sad incongruent stimuli, as electrophysiological evidence of impaired conflict processing in subjects with MDD. The sLORETA results showed that MDD patients had a higher current density in rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rostral ACC) within N450 time window in response to happy incongruent trials than happy congruent stimuli. Moreover, HC subjects had stronger activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) region in response to incongruent stimuli than congruent stimuli, revealing successful inhibition of emotional distraction in HCs, which was absent in MDDs.Conclusion: Our results indicated that rostral ACC was implicated in the processing of negative emotional distraction in MDDs, as well as impaired inhibition of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli, relative to HCs. This work furnishes novel behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that are closely related to emotional conflict among MDD patients.

【 授权许可】

Unknown