Aberrant emotion networks in early major depressive disorder patients: an eigenvector centrality mapping study

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious mental disorder that negatively affects the quality of life of many individuals, and is a heavy economic burden to society. In recent years it was thought that depression is a 'disconnection syndrome'. Disorganized brain activity and un-modulated emotion responses were considered the key neuropathologies underlying depression. In the present study, we investigated the alteration of whole brain network connectivity in 28 first-episode, drug-naive patients, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and a new analytical method called voxel-based eigenvector centrality mapping. We found that compared with normal controls, MDD patients had lower functional connectivity in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, insula, hippocampus, amygdala and cerebellum, and higher functional connectivity in the medial prefrontal cortex. The functional connectivity strength at the right hippocampus (r=-0.413, P=0.032) and the right insula (r=-0.372, P=0.041) negatively correlated with the severity of the disease. We further examined coordination among these regions, and found that frontal-subcortical connection was reduced and insula-medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connection was increased. These results are consistent with previous hypotheses on the neural mechanism of MDD, and provide further evidence that emotion networks are already interrupted in early stages of depression.