Altered patterns of brain activity during transient sadness in children at familial risk for major depression

Abstract

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of sadness, the prevailing mood in major depression (MD), in a prospective, well-documented community sample followed since birth. The children, comprising 136 children (65 boys and 71 girls) of mothers with varying levels of depressive symptomatology, were scanned - using a 1.5-Tesla system - while they watched 5 blocks of both sad and neutral film excerpts. Following scanning, they rated the emotions they experienced, and if they identified sadness, they were also asked to rate its intensity. In children whose mothers exhibited higher depressive symptomatology, compared to children whose mothers displayed lower depressive symptomatology, altered neural responses to sad film excerpts were noted in brain regions known to be involved in sadness and MD, notably the insula, anterior cingulate cortex and caudate nucleus, even though the children did not differ in current mood. Whether this represents genetic vulnerability or a consequence of exposure to maternal depressive symptoms at a young age is unknown. The results are consistent with the results of studies in healthy adults and MD patients. The present study suggests that an altered pattern of regional brain responses to sad stimuli, is already present in childhood and might represent vulnerability for MD later in life.