Toward a functional neuroanatomy of dysthymia: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Dysthymia is a common mood disorder. Recent studies have confirmed the neurobiological and treatment response overlap of dysthymia with major depression. There are no previous published studies of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in dysthymia.

fMRI was used to compare neural processing of 17 unmedicated dysthymic patients with 17 age, sex, and education-matched control subjects in a mood induction paradigm using the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS).

Using a random effects analysis to compare the groups, the results revealed that the dysthymic patients had significantly reduced activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to controls. The dysthymic patients exhibited increased activation in the amygdala, anterior cingulate and insula compared to controls and these differences were more evident when processing negative than positive images.

This study included both early and late subtypes of dysthymia, and participants were only imaged at one time point, which may limit the generalizability of the results.

The findings suggest the involvement of the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, amygdala, and insula in the neural circuitry underlying dysthymia. It is suggested that altered activation in some of these neural regions may be a common substrate for depressive disorders in general while others may relate specifically to symptom characteristics and the chronic course of dysthymia. These findings are particularly striking given the history of this deceptively mild disorder which is still confused by some with character pathology.