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Reward Processing in Psychiatric Inpatients With Depression
Hyuntaek Oh1, Jaehoon Lee2, Michelle A Patriquin1
1Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; The Menninger Clinic, Houston, Texas.
Summary
Major depressive disorder (MDD) patients with severe symptoms show reduced reward responses in brain regions like the putamen. This dysfunction is linked to symptom severity, not just comorbidities.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- Major depressive disorder (MDD) is commonly linked to reward-circuit dysfunction.
- Previous studies show reduced reward responses in MDD, but the link to symptom severity versus comorbidities is unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate reward-processing differences in patients with severe depressive symptoms (DEPs) compared to psychiatric controls (PCs) and healthy controls.
- To determine if reward-processing dysfunction in MDD is associated with symptom severity or comorbid diagnoses.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using a juice-delivery task.
- Comparison of DEPs (n=108) with PCs (n=108) and healthy controls (n=62).
- DEPs were matched to healthy controls demographically and to PCs for demographics and psychiatric diagnoses.
Main Results:
- DEPs exhibited significantly smaller responses to reward stimulus in the left putamen compared to PCs and healthy controls.
- Exploratory analysis revealed lower reward responses in DEPs within the bilateral dorsal striatum, middle frontal gyrus, left precentral gyrus, and middle cingulate cortex.
- Reduced reward responses in the left putamen were correlated with depressive symptom severity in both DEPs and PCs.
Conclusions:
- Individuals with severe depressive symptoms may have a diminished capacity to modulate behavior based on rewards.
- Reward-processing dysfunction, particularly in the left putamen, is associated with the severity of depressive symptoms in MDD.
- Findings highlight the impact of depression severity on neural reward pathways.
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