Face Recognition Brain Functional Connectivity in Patients With Major Depression: A Brain Source Localization Study...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with deficits in facial recognition, which can impair social functioning.
• The underlying neural mechanisms, particularly brain functional connectivity (FC), contributing to these deficits in MDD remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether patients with MDD exhibit facial perceptual processing disorders characterized by altered brain functional connectivity (FC).
• To compare brain FC patterns during face recognition tasks between individuals with MDD and healthy controls.

Main Methods:

• Utilized event-related potentials (ERP) and 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG) in 20 MDD patients and 20 healthy controls (HC).
• Employed minimum-norm estimate (MNE) for source reconstruction and Fieldtrip software for EEG analysis, including Fast Fourier transform and debiased estimate of weighted phase-lag index (wPLI) for theta band FC.
• Statistical analysis involved independent t-tests with FDR correction to identify significant group differences in FC.

Main Results:

• Face recognition tasks elicited higher amplitude in both MDD and HC groups compared to non-face tasks.
• MDD patients exhibited lower face recognition amplitude than HC participants.
• Analysis revealed stronger FC in the MDD group across most brain regions during critical time periods, with only one instance of stronger FC in HC.

Conclusions:

• Brain functional connectivity (FC) dysfunction in MDD is complex, involving heightened and widespread connectivity with emotion-related brain regions.
• MDD patients demonstrate less efficient and more complex brain FC during the early stages of face recognition.
• These findings suggest that altered FC contributes to the face recognition deficits observed in major depressive disorder.