Abstract
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.
Highlights
Depression is among the most prevalent of all psychiatric disorders (First, 2013)
Results revealed that the difference between groups was significant in responding to happy facial expression (F1,38 = 6.12, p < 0.02), indicating that the Stroop score between happy incongruent trials and happy congruent trials in Major depression disorder (MDD) was significantly higher than those of HC group
The present study investigated the differences in behavior and neural response to the emotional conflict in major depressive subjects and HCs, using a face–word Stroop task
Summary
Depression is among the most prevalent of all psychiatric disorders (First, 2013). Major depression disorder (MDD) has become a serious mental health issue, which always accompanies by severe symptom. The cardinal features of depressive disorder are the impaired inhibition of task-irrelevant stimuli, especially to negative emotional information (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010). Depressed individuals have difficulty in disengaging attention from negative thoughts, memories, and events in order to sustain attention toward on-going cognitive tasks (Siegle et al, 2002; Disner et al, 2011). Activation abnormalities in brain areas implicated in emotional processing have been confirmed (Groenewold et al, 2013). The influence of negative emotions on depression in emotional conflict processing is still unclear
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