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Deficits in hippocampal and anterior cingulate functioning during verbal declarative memory encoding in midlife major
J Douglas Bremner1, Meena Vythilingam, Eric Vermetten
1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, and Atlanta VA Medical Center, Decatur, GA, USA. jdbremn@emory.edu
The American Journal of Psychiatry
|April 2, 2004
Summary
Major depression is linked to impaired verbal memory. Brain imaging revealed reduced hippocampal and prefrontal cortex activation during memory tasks in depressed individuals, supporting functional deficits.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Major depression is associated with deficits in verbal declarative memory.
- Impaired hippocampal and prefrontal cortical functioning and structure are noted in depression.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate hippocampal and prefrontal cortex functioning during a verbal declarative memory task.
- To investigate these functions specifically in individuals with midlife major depression.
Main Methods:
- Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging was used.
- 18 individuals with midlife major depression and 9 healthy controls performed a control task and a verbal encoding task.
Main Results:
- Healthy subjects showed activation in the right hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (anterior cingulate) during verbal memory encoding.
- Individuals with depression did not exhibit this hippocampal and prefrontal activation.
- Cuneus and cerebellum activation patterns also differed between groups.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest a failure of hippocampal and anterior cingulate activation in individuals with major depression.
- These results support the hypothesis of functional deficits in the hippocampus and anterior cingulate in depression.
- This highlights potential neural mechanisms underlying memory impairments in major depression.