Abnormal connectivity of anterior-insular subdivisions and relationship with somatic symptom in depressive patients

The novel subtype of major depressive disorder characterized by somatic symptoms is associated with poor treatment efficacy and prognosis: A data-driven cluster analysis of a prospective cohort in China

BACKGROUND

There is not yet a valid and evidence-based system to classify patients with MDD into more homogeneous subtypes based on their clinical features. This study aims to identify symptom-based subtypes of MDD and investigate whether the treatment outcomes of those subtypes would be different.

METHOD

The cohort was established at 12 densely populated cities of China. A total of 1487 patients were enrolled. All participants were 18-65 years old and diagnosed with MDD. Participants were followed up at baseline, weeks 4, 8, and 12, and months 4 and 6. K-means algorithm was used to cluster patients with MDD according to clinical symptoms. The network analysis was adopted to characterize and compare the symptom patterns in the clusters. We also examined the associations between the clusters and the clinical outcomes.

RESULTS

The optimal number of the clusters was determined to be 2. Each cluster's maximum Jaccard Co-efficient was calculated to be >0.5 (cluster1 = 0.53, cluster 2 = 0.67). The symptom "depressed mood" and some other affective symptoms were the most prominent in cluster 1. Somatic symptoms, such as weight loss and general somatic symptoms, had the greatest expected influence in cluster 2. Compared with the response rates of the patients in the "somatic cluster", those of the patients in the "affective cluster" were significantly higher (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with MDD might be classified into two symptom-based subtypes featured with affective symptoms or somatic symptoms. The treatment efficacy and prognosis of the subtype featured with somatic symptoms may be worse.

Acculturative Orientations Among Hispanic/Latinx Caregivers in the ABCD Study: Associations With Caregiver and Youth Mental Health and Youth Brain Function

Background

Population-based neuroscience offers opportunities to examine important but understudied sociocultural factors such as acculturation. Acculturation refers to the extent to which an individual retains their cultural heritage and/or adopts the receiving society's culture and is particularly salient among Hispanic/Latinx immigrants. Specific acculturative orientations have been linked to vulnerability to substance use, depression, and suicide and are known to influence family dynamics between caregivers and their children.

Methods

Using data from first- and second-generation Hispanic/Latinx caregivers in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 1057), we examined how caregivers' acculturative orientation affects their mental health, as well as the mental health and brain function of their children. Neuroimaging analyses focused on regions associated with self- and affiliation-based social processing (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, insula, and temporoparietal junction).

Results

We identified 2 profiles of caregiver acculturation: bicultural (retains heritage culture while adopting U.S. culture) and detached (discards heritage culture and rejects U.S. culture). Bicultural caregivers exhibited fewer internalizing and externalizing problems than detached caregivers; furthermore, youth exhibited similar internalizing effects across caregiver profiles. In addition, youth with bicultural caregivers displayed increased resting-state brain activity (i.e., fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity) in the left insula, which has been linked to psychopathology; however, differences in long-range functional connectivity were not significant.

Conclusions

Caregiver acculturation is an important familial factor that has been linked to significant differences in youth mental health and insula activity. Future work should examine sociocultural and neurodevelopmental changes across adolescence to assess health outcomes and determine whether localized, corticolimbic brain effects are ultimately translated into long-range connectivity differences.

Insular dysfunction of interoception in major depressive disorder: from the perspective of neuroimaging

Interoception plays a crucial role in maintaining bodily homeostasis and promoting survival, and is considered the basis of human emotion, cognition, and self-formation. A malfunction of interoception is increasingly suggested to be a fundamental component of different mental health conditions, and depressive disorders have been especially closely associated. Interoceptive signaling and processing depends on a system called the "interoceptive pathway," with the insula, located in the deep part of the lateral fissure, being the most important brain structure in this pathway. Neuroimaging studies have revealed alterations in the structure and function of the insula in a large number of individuals with depression, yet the precise relationship between these alterations and interoceptive dysfunction remains unclear. The goal of this review is to examine the evidence that exists for dysfunction of interoception in people with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and to determine the associated specific alterations in the structure and function of the insula revealed by neuroimaging. Overall, three aspects of the potential relationship between interoceptive dysfunction and alterations in insular function in people with depression have been assessed, namely clinical symptoms, quantitative measures of interoceptive function and ability, and interoceptive modulation. To conclude, several specific limitations of the published studies and important lines of enquiry for future research are offered.

Functional connectomics in depression: insights into therapies

Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by heterogeneous cognitive and behavioral symptoms. The emerging research paradigm of functional connectomics has provided a quantitative theoretical framework and analytic tools for parsing variations in the organization and function of brain networks in depression. In this review, we first discuss recent progress in depression-associated functional connectome variations. We then discuss treatment-specific brain network outcomes in depression and propose a hypothetical model highlighting the advantages and uniqueness of each treatment in relation to the modulation of specific brain network connectivity and symptoms of depression. Finally, we look to the future promise of combining multiple treatment types in clinical practice, using multisite datasets and multimodal neuroimaging approaches, and identifying biological depression subtypes.

Abnormal cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical circuit centered on the thalamus in MDD patients with somatic symptoms: Evidence from the REST-meta-MDD project

OBJECTIVE

Somatic symptoms are common comorbidities of major depressive disorder (MDD), and negatively impact the course and severity of the disease. In order to enrich the understanding of the pathological mechanism and clarify the neurobiological basis of somatic symptoms in depression, we attempted to explore the changes of brain structure and function in a large sample between depression with and without somatic symptoms.

METHODS

Structure magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data were collected from 342 patients with somatic symptoms (SD), 208 patients without somatic symptoms (NSD), and 510 healthy controls (HCs) based on the REST-meta-MDD project. We analyzed the whole brain VBM maps of the three groups, and combined with weight degree centrality (DC) index, we investigated whether the brain regions with gray matter volume (GMV) and gray matter density (GMD) abnormalities in MDD patients with somatic symptoms had corresponding brain functional abnormalities.

RESULTS

Between depression with and without somatic symptoms, we found that there are extensive GMV and GMD differences involving cortical regions such as the temporal lobe, occipital lobe, and insula, as well as subcortical brain regions such as thalamus and striatum. The comparison results of weight DC signals of GMV and GMD abnormal clusters between the SD and NSD groups were basically consistent with the GMV and GMD abnormal clusters.

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that the structure and function of cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuit centered on the thalamus were abnormal in MDD patients with somatic symptoms. This may be the neurobiological basis of somatic symptoms in MDD.

A voxel-based meta-analysis comparing medication-naive patients of major depression with treated longer-term ill cases

Structural neuroimaging studies have identified brain areas implicated in the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, findings have been inconsistent, potentially due to variable illness duration and effects of antidepressant treatment. Using a meta-analytic approach, we compared gray matter (GM) volumes in patients grouped by medication status (naïve and treated) and illness duration (early course and long-term ill) to identify potential treatment and illness duration effects on brain structure. A total of 70 studies were included, including 3682 patients and 3469 controls. The pooled analysis found frontal, temporal and limbic regions with decreased GM volume in MDD patients. Additional analyses indicated that larger GM volume in the right striatum and smaller GM volume in the right precuneus are likely to be associated with drug effects, while smaller GM volume in the right temporal gyrus may correlate with longer illness duration. Similar GM decreases in bilateral medial frontal cortex between patient subgroups suggest that this alteration may persist over the course of illness and drug treatment.

Somatic symptoms mediate the association between subclinical anxiety and depressive symptoms and its neuroimaging mechanisms

BACKGROUND

Subclinical anxiety, depressive and somatic symptoms appear closely related. However, it remains unclear whether somatic symptoms mediate the association between subclinical anxiety and depressive symptoms and what the underlying neuroimaging mechanisms are for the mediating effect.

METHODS

Data of healthy participants (n = 466) and participants in remission of major depressive disorder (n = 53) were obtained from the Human Connectome Project. The Achenbach Adult Self-Report was adopted to assess anxiety, depressive and somatic symptoms. All participants completed four runs of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Mediation analyses were utilized to explore the interactions among these symptoms and their neuroimaging mechanisms.

RESULTS

Somatic symptoms partially mediated the association between subclinical anxiety and depressive symptoms in healthy participants (anxiety→somatic→depression: effect: 0.2785, Boot 95% CI: 0.0958-0.3729; depression→somatic→anxiety: effect: 0.0753, Boot 95% CI: 0.0232-0.1314) and participants in remission of MDD (anxiety→somatic→depression: effect: 0.2948, Boot 95% CI: 0.0357-0.7382; depression→somatic→anxiety: effect: 0.0984, Boot 95% CI: 0.0007-0.2438). Resting-state functional connectivity (FC) between the right medial superior frontal gyrus and the left thalamus and somatic symptoms as chain mediators partially mediated the effect of subclinical depressive symptoms on subclinical anxiety symptoms in healthy participants (effect: 0.0020, Boot 95% CI: 0.0003-0.0043). The mean strength of common FCs of subclinical depressive and somatic symptoms, somatic symptoms, and the mean strength of common FCs of subclinical anxiety and somatic symptoms as chain mediators partially mediated the effect of subclinical depressive symptoms on subclinical anxiety symptoms in remission of MDD (effect: 0.0437, Boot 95% CI: 0.0024-0.1190). These common FCs mainly involved the insula, precentral gyri, postcentral gyri and cingulate gyri. Furthermore, FC between the triangular part of the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left postcentral gyrus was positively associated with subclinical anxiety, depressive and somatic symptoms in remission of MDD (FDR-corrected p < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS

Somatic symptoms partially mediate the interaction between subclinical anxiety and depressive symptoms. FCs involving the right medial superior frontal gyrus, left thalamus, triangular part of left inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral insula, precentral gyri, postcentral gyri and cingulate gyri maybe underlie the mediating effect of somatic symptoms.

A graph theory neuroimaging approach to distinguish the depression of bipolar disorder from major depressive disorder in adolescents and young adults

BACKGROUND

Markers to differentiate depressions of bipolar disorder (BD-Dep) from depressions of major depressive disorder (MDD-Dep), and for more targeted treatments, are critically needed to decrease current high rates of misdiagnosis that can lead to ineffective or potentially deleterious treatments. Distinguishing, and specifically treating the depressions, during the adolescent/young adult epoch is especially important to decrease illness progression and improve prognosis, and suicide, as it is the epoch when suicide thoughts and behaviors often emerge. With differences in functional connectivity patterns reported when BD-Dep and MDD-Dep have been studied separately, this study used a graph theory approach aimed to identify functional connectivity differences in their direct comparison.

METHODS

Functional magnetic resonance imaging whole-brain functional connectivity (Intrinsic Connectivity Distribution, ICD) measures were compared across adolescents/young adults with BD-Dep (n = 28), MDD-Dep (n = 20) and HC (n = 111). Follow-up seed-based connectivity was conducted on regions of significant ICD differences. Relationships with demographic and clinical measures were assessed.

RESULTS

Compared to the HC group, both the BD-Dep and MDD-Dep groups exhibited left-sided frontal, insular, and medial temporal ICD increases. The BD-Dep group had additional right-sided ICD increases in frontal, basal ganglia, and fusiform areas. In seed-based analyses, the BD-Dep group exhibited increased interhemispheric functional connectivity between frontal areas not seen in the MDD-Dep group.

LIMITATIONS

Modest sample size; medications not studied systematically.

CONCLUSIONS

This study supports bilateral and interhemispheric functional dysconnectivity as features of BD-Dep that may differentiate it from MDD-Dep in adolescents/young adults and serve as a target for early diagnosis and treatment strategies.

Abnormal dynamic functional network connectivity in first-episode, drug-naïve patients with major depressive disorder

Dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) could capture temporal features of spontaneous brain activity during MRI scanning, and it might be a powerful tool to examine functional brain network alters in major depressive disorder (MDD). Therefore, this study investigated the changes in temporal properties of dFNC of first-episode, drug-naïve patients with MDD. A total of 48 first-episode, drug-naïve MDD patients and 46 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were recruited in this study. Sliding windows were implied to construct dFNC. We assessed the relationships between altered dFNC temporal properties and depressive symptoms. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were used to examine the diagnostic performance of these altered temporal properties. The results showed that patients with MDD have more occurrences and spent more time in a weak connection state, but with fewer occurrences and shorter dwell time in a strong connection state. Importantly, the fractional time and mean dwell time of state 2 was negatively correlated with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) scores. ROC curve analysis demonstrated that these temporal properties have great identified power including the fractional time and mean dwell time in state 2, and the AUC is 0.872, 0.837, respectively. The AUC of the combination of fractional time and mean dwell time in state 2 with age, gender is 0.881. Our results indicated the temporal properties of dFNC are altered in first-episode, drug-naïve patients with MDD, and these changes' properties could serve as a potential biomarker in MDD.

Alteration of interoceptive sensitivity: expanding the spectrum of behavioural disorders in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Background

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder with progressive loss of upper and lower motor neurons. Non-motor-symptoms, such as cognitive, emotional, autonomic, and somatosensory alterations, have been also described.

Interoception represents the link between the body and brain, since it refers to the ability to consciously perceive the physical condition of the inner body, including one’s heartbeat (i.e., interoceptive sensitivity, IS).

Objectives

To evaluate IS in ALS patients by means of a well-established task: the heartbeat perception task. Moreover, we evaluated possible correlations between IS and neuropsychological, affective, and disease-related characteristics.

Methods

Fifty-five ALS patients (mean-age = 60.3 ± 12.5 years; mean disease-duration = 20.9 ± 18.8 months) and 41 caregivers (CG) underwent the heartbeat perception task and an extensive evaluation of motor, cognitive, body awareness, affective, and emotion domains.

Results

ALS patients showed lower IS than CG (0.68 ± 0.24 vs 0.82 ± 0.16; p = 0.003). Significant correlations were found between IS and self-reported measures of alexithymia (subscale of Toronto Alexithymia scale-20 “difficulties in describing feelings”; rho =  − .391, p = .003) and interoceptive awareness (subscale of Multidimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness “not worrying about pain”; rho = .405, p = .002). No significant differences were found on questionnaires for depression and anxiety between patients with ALS and their caregivers (p > .05).

Conclusions

ALS patients show reduced interoceptive sensitivity that is associated with poorer ability to describe feelings and with lower focalization on pain, regardless of cognitive and motor impairment. Alteration of interoception may represent a specific behavioural sign within the spectrum of emotion processing deficits described in ALS patients.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10072-022-06231-4.

Clinical Manifestations of Body Memories: The Impact of Past Bodily Experiences on Mental Health

Bodily experiences such as the feeling of touch, pain or inner signals of the body are deeply emotional and activate brain networks that mediate their perception and higher-order processing. While the ad hoc perception of bodily signals and their influence on behavior is empirically well studied, there is a knowledge gap on how we store and retrieve bodily experiences that we perceived in the past, and how this influences our everyday life. Here, we explore the hypothesis that negative body memories, that is, negative bodily experiences of the past that are stored in memory and influence behavior, contribute to the development of somatic manifestations of mental health problems including somatic symptoms, traumatic re-experiences or dissociative symptoms. By combining knowledge from the areas of cognitive neuroscience and clinical neuroscience with insights from psychotherapy, we identify Clinical Body Memory (CBM) mechanisms that specify how mental health problems could be driven by corporeal experiences stored in memory. The major argument is that the investigation of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie the storage and retrieval of body memories provides us with empirical access to reduce the negative impact of body memories on mental health.

Aberrant functional connectivity in insular subregions in somatic depression: a resting-state fMRI study

BACKGROUND

Somatic depression (SD) is different from non-somatic depression (NSD), and insular subregions have been associated with somatic symptoms. However, the pattern of damage in the insular subregions in SD remains unclear. The aim of this study was to use functional connectivity (FC) analyses to explore the bilateral ventral anterior insula (vAI), bilateral dorsal anterior insula (dAI), and bilateral posterior insula (PI) brain circuits in SD patients.

METHODS

The study included 28 SD patients, 30 NSD patients, and 30 matched healthy control (HC) subjects. All participants underwent 3.0 T resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging. FC analyses were used to explore synchronization between insular subregions and the whole brain in the context of depression with somatic symptoms. Pearson correlation analyses were performed to assess relationships between FC values in brain regions showing significant differences and the total and factor scores on the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD17).

RESULTS

Compared with the NSD group, the SD group showed significantly decreased FC between the left vAI and the right rectus gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, and right angular gyrus; between the right vAI and the right middle cingulate cortex, right precuneus, and right superior frontal gyrus; between the left dAI and the left fusiform gyrus; and between the right dAI and the left postcentral gyrus. Relative to the NSD group, the SD group exhibited increased FC between the left dAI and the left fusiform gyrus. There were no differences in FC between bilateral PI and any brain regions among the SD, NSD, and HC groups. Within the SD group, FC values between the left vAI and right rectus gyrus were positively correlated with cognitive impairment scores on the HAMD17; FC values between the right vAI and right superior frontal gyrus were positively related to the total scores and cognitive impairment scores on the HAMD17 (p < 0.05, uncorrected).

CONCLUSIONS

Aberrant FC between the anterior insula and the frontal and limbic cortices may be one possible mechanism underlying SD.

Resting State Functional Connectivity of Brain With Electroconvulsive Therapy in Depression: Meta-Analysis to Understand Its Mechanisms

Introduction: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a commonly used brain stimulation treatment for treatment-resistant or severe depression. This study was planned to find the effects of ECT on brain connectivity by conducting a systematic review and coordinate-based meta-analysis of the studies performing resting state fMRI (rsfMRI) in patients with depression receiving ECT. Methods: We systematically searched the databases published up to July 31, 2020, for studies in patients having depression that compared resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) before and after a course of pulse wave ECT. Meta-analysis was performed using the activation likelihood estimation method after extracting details about coordinates, voxel size, and method for correction of multiple comparisons corresponding to the significant clusters and the respective rsFC analysis measure with its method of extraction. Results: Among 41 articles selected for full-text review, 31 articles were included in the systematic review. Among them, 13 articles were included in the meta-analysis, and a total of 73 foci of 21 experiments were examined using activation likelihood estimation in 10 sets. Using the cluster-level interference method, one voxel-wise analysis with the measure of amplitude of low frequency fluctuations and one seed-voxel analysis with the right hippocampus showed a significant reduction (p < 0.0001) in the left cingulate gyrus (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) and a significant increase (p < 0.0001) in the right hippocampus with the right parahippocampal gyrus, respectively. Another analysis with the studies implementing network-wise (posterior default mode network: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) resting state functional connectivity showed a significant increase (p < 0.001) in bilateral posterior cingulate cortex. There was considerable variability as well as a few key deficits in the preprocessing and analysis of the neuroimages and the reporting of results in the included studies. Due to lesser studies, we could not do further analysis to address the neuroimaging variability and subject-related differences. Conclusion: The brain regions noted in this meta-analysis are reasonably specific and distinguished, and they had significant changes in resting state functional connectivity after a course of ECT for depression. More studies with better neuroimaging standards should be conducted in the future to confirm these results in different subgroups of depression and with varied aspects of ECT.