Connectivity of the Frontal Cortical Oscillatory Dynamics Underlying Inhibitory Control During a Go/No-Go Task As a Predictive Biomarker in Major Depression

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by core functional deficits in cognitive inhibition, which is crucial for emotion regulation. To assess the response to ruminative and negative mood states, it was hypothesized that MDD patients have prolonged disparities in the oscillatory dynamics of the frontal cortical regions across the life course of the disease.

Method: A "go/no-go" response inhibition paradigm was tested in 31 MDD patients and 19 age-matched healthy controls after magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanning. The use of minimum norm estimates (MNE) examined the changes of inhibitory control network which included the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA), and left primary motor cortex (M1). The power spectrum (PS) within each node and the functional connectivity (FC) between nodes were compared between two groups. Furthermore, Pearson correlation was calculated to estimate the relationship between altered FC and clinical features.

Result: PS was significantly reduced in left motor and preSMA of MDD patients in both beta (13-30 Hz) and low gamma (30-50 Hz) bands. Compared to the HC group, the MDD group demonstrated higher connectivity between M1 and preSMA in the beta band ( = 3.214, = 0.002, FDR corrected) and showed reduced connectivity between preSMA and IFG in the low gamma band ( = -2.612, = 0.012, FDR corrected). The FC between M1 and preSMA in the beta band was positively correlated with illness duration ( = 0.475, = 0.005, FDR corrected), while the FC between preSMA and IFG in the low gamma band was negatively correlated with illness duration ( = -0.509, = 0.002, FDR corrected) and retardation factor scores ( = -0.288, = 0.022, uncorrected).

Conclusion: In this study, a clinical neurophysiological signature of cognitive inhibition leading to sustained negative affect as well as functional non-recovery in MDD patients is highlighted. Duration of illness (DI) plays a key role in negative emotional processing, heighten rumination, impulsivity, and disinhibition.