Cortical thickness in youth with major depressive disorder

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Normand Carrey¹  Xiao-Ru Yang²  Frank P MacMaster²  Natalia Jaworska²  Stephanie Reynolds²  Lisa Marie Langevin² 

[1] Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada;Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary, Behavioral Research Unit, Alberta Children’s Hospital, 2888 Shaganappi Trail NW, T3B 6A8, Calgary, AB, Canada;Department of Pediatrics, University of Calgary, Behavioral Research Unit, Alberta Children’s Hospital, 2888 Shaganappi Trail NW, T3B 6A8, Calgary, AB, Canada;

关键词: Adolescence;    Cortical thickness;    Depression;    Magnetic resonance imaging;    Prefrontal cortex;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-14-83

 received in 2013-04-26, accepted in 2014-03-05,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundStudies in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) have implicated dysregulation of frontal-limbic circuits in the symptomology of this disorder. We hypothesized that the middle frontal gyrus (MFG; a core portion of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or DLPFC) and the anterior cingulate (caudal), regions implicated in emotive and cognitive control, would display a reduced cortical thickness in youth with MDD as compared to healthy, non-depressed adolescents.MethodsSixteen healthy control adolescents (17.19 ± 1.87 years; 7 males, 9 females) and thirty MDD participants (16.89 ± 2.01 years; 9 males, 21 females) underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Cortical thickness analysis was carried out using FreeSurfer software.ResultsCounter to our hypothesis, we observed thicker right and left rostral MFG in MDD adolescents as compared to controls (p = 0.004 and p = 0.005, respectively). Furthermore, the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex was thicker in MDD subjects as compared to controls (p = 0.009). In MDD subjects, there was a significant inverse correlation between age and left MFG thickness (r = -0.45, p = 0.001).ConclusionsThese results have implications for the developmental trajectory of the frontal lobe in adolescent MDD. The MFG is implicated in the frontal-limbic circuits underlying executive functioning and their interaction with affective processing. Alterations in this region are likely involved with the symptoms of MDD. Limitations include a small sample size and cross sectional design.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Reynolds et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.