The feeling of being addressed is the first step in a complex processing stream enabling successful social communication. Social impairments are a relevant characteristic of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Here, we investigated a mechanism which—if impaired—might contribute to withdrawal or isolation in MDD, namely, the neural processing of social cues such as body orientation and gesture. During funtional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquisition, 33 patients with MDD and 43 healthy control subjects watched video clips of a speaking actor: one version with a gesture accompanying the speech and one without gesture. Videos were filmed simultaneously from two different viewpoints: one with the actor facing the viewer head‐on (frontal) and one side‐view (lateral). After every clip, the participants were instructed to evaluate whether they felt addressed or not. Despite overall comparable addressment ratings and a large overlap in activation patterns in MDD and healthy subjects for gesture processing, the anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral superior/middle frontal cortex, and right angular gyrus were more strongly activated in patients than in healthy subjects for the frontal conditions. Our analyses revealed that patients showed specifically higher activation than healthy subjects for the frontal condition without gesture in regions including the posterior cingulate cortex, left prefrontal cortex, and the left hippocampus. We conclude that MDD patients can recognize and interpret social cues such as gesture or body orientation; however, they seem to require more neural resources. This additional effort might affect successful communication and contribute to social isolation in MDD.

中文翻译：

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感觉解决了！重度抑郁症患者社会交往线索的神经处理。

被解决的感觉是实现成功社交沟通的复杂处理流程的第一步。社交障碍是重度抑郁症 (MDD) 患者的一个相关特征。在这里，我们研究了一种机制——如果受损——可能导致 MDD 中的退缩或孤立，即社会线索的神经处理，如身体方向和手势。在功能性磁共振成像 (fMRI) 数据采集期间，33 名 MDD 患者和 43 名健康对照受试者观看了一位演讲演员的视频片段：一个版本带有伴随演讲的手势，另一个版本没有手势。视频是从两个不同的角度同时拍摄的：一个是演员正面（正面）和一个侧面（侧面）。每次剪辑后，参与者被要求评估他们是否感到受到关注。尽管在 MDD 和健康受试者的手势处理方面总体上具有可比性的寻址评级和激活模式的大量重叠，但与健康受试者相比，患者的前扣带回皮层、双侧上/中额叶皮层和右角回在额叶方面被更强烈地激活。条件。我们的分析显示，在后扣带回皮层、左前额叶皮层和左海马体等区域，在没有手势的额叶情况下，患者表现出比健康受试者更高的激活。我们得出结论，MDD 患者可以识别和解释社会线索，例如手势或身体方向；然而，它们似乎需要更多的神经资源。