
Departmental Papers (Psychology)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
8-30-2016
Publication Source
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume
254
Start Page
18
Last Page
25
DOI
10.1016/j.pscychresns.2016.06.003
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies of mood disorders demonstrate abnormalities in brain regions implicated in reward processing. However, there is a paucity of research investigating how social rewards affect reward circuit activity in these disorders. Here, we evaluated the relationship of both diagnostic category and dimensional depression severity to reward system function in bipolar and unipolar depression. In total, 86 adults were included, including 24 patients with bipolar depression, 24 patients with unipolar depression, and 38 healthy comparison subjects. Participants completed a social reward task during 3T BOLD fMRI. On average, diagnostic groups did not differ in activation to social reward. However, greater depression severity significantly correlated with reduced bilateral ventral striatum activation to social reward in the bipolar depressed group, but not the unipolar depressed group. In addition, decreased left orbitofrontal cortical activation correlated with more severe symptoms in bipolar depression, but not unipolar depression. These differential dimensional effects resulted in a significant voxelwise group by depression severity interaction. Taken together, these results provide initial evidence that deficits in social reward processing are differentially related to depression severity in the two disorders.
Copyright/Permission Statement
© 2016. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords
Neuroimaging, Mood disorders, Magnetic resonance imaging
Recommended Citation
Sharma, A., Satterthwaite, T. D., Vandekar, L., Katchmar, N., Daldal, A., Ruparel, K., Elliott, M., Bladassano, C., Thase, M. E., Gur, R. E., Kable, J. W., & Wolf, D. H. (2016). Divergent Relationship of Depression Severity to Social Reward Responses Among Patients With Bipolar Versus Unipolar Depression. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 254 18-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2016.06.003
Date Posted: 06 December 2017
This document has been peer reviewed.