Abstract Background: Aberrant brain connectivity during emotional processing, especially within the fronto-limbic pathway, is one of the hallmarks of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, a lack of systematic approaches in previous studies made it difficult to determine whether a specific alteration in brain connectivity reflects a cause, correlate, or effect of the disorder. The current study aimed to investigate neural mechanisms that correspond to disease, risk and resilience in major depression during implicit processing of emotion cues. Methods: Forty-eight patients with MDD, 49 first-degree relatives of patients with MDD and 103 healthy controls performed a face-matching task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We used dynamic causal modelling to estimate task-dependent effective connectivity at the subject level. Parametric empirical Bayes was then performed to quantify group differences in effective connectivity. Results: Depressive pathology was associated with decreased effective connectivity from the left amygdala and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to the right fusiform gyrus, whereas familial risk for depression corresponded to decreased connectivity from the right orbitofrontal cortex to the left insula and from the left orbitofrontal cortex to the right fusiform gyrus. Resilience for depression was related to increased connectivity from the anterior cingulate cortex to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the depressive state alters top-down control of higher visual regions during the processing of emotional faces, whereas increased connectivity within the cognitive control network promotes resilience to depression.

中文翻译：

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严重抑郁症患者面部处理过程中的有效连通性：区分病理，风险和适应力的标志

摘要背景：在情绪处理过程中，特别是在额-边缘途径中，异常的大脑连通性是主要抑郁症（MDD）的标志之一。但是，先前的研究缺乏系统的方法，因此很难确定大脑连接性的特定改变是否反映了这种疾病的原因，相关性或效果。当前的研究旨在调查在情绪暗示的内隐处理过程中，与重度抑郁症的疾病，风险和适应力相对应的神经机制。方法：在功能磁共振成像过程中，对48位MDD患者，49位MDD一级亲属和103位健康对照进行了面部匹配任务。我们使用动态因果模型来估计主题级别上与任务相关的有效连接。然后执行参数经验贝叶斯量化有效连接中的组差异。结果：抑郁病理与左杏仁核和左前外侧前额叶皮层至右梭状回之间的有效连通性降低有关，而抑郁的家族性风险与从右眶额叶皮层至左岛和从左眶额叶皮层至右梭状皮层的连通性降低有关。右梭状回。抑郁的复原力与从前扣带回皮质到左后外侧前额叶皮质的连通性增加有关。结论：我们的结果表明，在情绪表情的处理过程中，抑郁状态改变了对较高视觉区域的自上而下的控制，