Neural Modulation Alteration to Positive and Negative Emotions in Depressed Patients: Insights from FMRI Using Positive/Negative Emotion Atlas

Background: Although it has been noticed that depressed patients show differences in processing emotions, the precise neural modulation mechanisms of positive and negative emotions remain elusive. FMRI is a cutting-edge medical imaging technology renowned for its high spatial resolution and dynamic temporal information, making it particularly suitable for the neural dynamics of depression research.

Methods: To address this gap, our study firstly leveraged fMRI to delineate activated regions associated with positive and negative emotions in healthy individuals, resulting in the creation of the positive emotion atlas (PEA) and the negative emotion atlas (NEA). Subsequently, we examined neuroimaging changes in depression patients using these atlases and evaluated their diagnostic performance based on machine learning.

Results: Our findings demonstrate that the classification accuracy of depressed patients based on PEA and NEA exceeded 0.70, a notable improvement compared to the whole-brain atlases. Furthermore, ALFF analysis unveiled significant differences between depressed patients and healthy controls in eight functional clusters during the NEA, focusing on the left cuneus, cingulate gyrus, and superior parietal lobule. In contrast, the PEA revealed more pronounced differences across fifteen clusters, involving the right fusiform gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule.

Conclusions: These findings emphasize the complex interplay between emotion modulation and depression, showcasing significant alterations in both PEA and NEA among depression patients. This research enhances our understanding of emotion modulation in depression, with implications for diagnosis and treatment evaluation.