Interaction between a history of depression and rumination on neural response to emotional faces

Both past depressive episodes and the personality trait of depressive rumination are strong risk factors for future depression. Depression is associated with abnormal emotional processing, which may be a neurobiological marker for vulnerability to depression. A consistent picture has yet to emerge a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological medicine 2011-09, Vol.41 (9), p.1845-1855
Main Authors: Thomas, E. J., Elliott, R., McKie, S., Arnone, D., Downey, D., Juhasz, G., Deakin, J. F. W., Anderson, I. M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Biological and medical sciences
Depression
Depressive Disorder - psychology
Emotion recognition
Emotions
Face
Facial Expression
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Medical sciences
Mental depression
Mental Processes
Mood disorders
Negative emotions
Neural networks
Neural Pathways - physiopathology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Risk Factors
Rumination
Vulnerability
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Summary:Both past depressive episodes and the personality trait of depressive rumination are strong risk factors for future depression. Depression is associated with abnormal emotional processing, which may be a neurobiological marker for vulnerability to depression. A consistent picture has yet to emerge as to how a history of depression and the tendency to ruminate influence emotional processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between rumination, past depression and neural responses when processing face emotions. The Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS) was completed by 30 remitted depressives and 37 controls who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning while viewing happy, sad, fearful and neutral faces. The remitted depressives showed overall reductions in neural responses to negative emotions relative to the controls. However, in the remitted depressives, but not the controls, RRS scores were correlated with increased neural responses to negative emotions and decreased responses to happiness in limbic regions. Automatic emotion processing biases and rumination seem to be correlated to aspects of vulnerability to depression. However, remission from depression may be maintained by a general suppression of limbic responsiveness to negative emotion.
ISSN:0033-2917
1469-8978
DOI:10.1017/S0033291711000043