The British Journal of Psychiatry (2008) 192: 356-361. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.107.043398
© 2008 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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Affective modulation of anterior cingulate cortex in young people at increased familial risk of depression

Zola N. Mannie, MSc, Ray Norbury, PhD, Susannah E. Murphy, MSc, Becky Inkster, PhD, Catherine J. Harmer, PhD and Philip J. Cowen, FRCPsych

University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK

Correspondence: Professor PJ Cowen, Neurosciences Building, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK Email: phil.cowen{at}psych.ox.ac.uk

Declaration of interest

None. Funding detailed in Acknowledgement.

Background

We previously found that children of parents with depression showed impaired performance on a task of emotional categorisation.

Aims

To test the hypothesis that children of parents with depression would show abnormal neural responses in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region involved in the integration of emotional and cognitive information.

Method

Eighteen young people (mean age 19.8 years) with no personal history of depression but with a biological parent with a history of major depression (FH+ participants) and 16 controls (mean age 19.9 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while completing an emotional counting Stroop task.

Results

Controls showed significant activation in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex to both positive and negative words during the emotional Stroop task. This activation was absent in FH+ participants.

Conclusions

Our findings show that people at increased familial risk of depression demonstrate impaired modulation of the anterior cingulate cortex in response to emotionally valenced stimuli.


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