Task-based functional connectivity reveals aberrance with the salience network during emotional interference in...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Gerontology

Background:

• Late-life depression (LLD) is a prevalent and impairing condition in older adults.
• Previous research indicates aberrant functional connectivity (FC) in brain networks associated with LLD.
• LLD is frequently linked to deficits in emotional and cognitive control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and compare the functional connectivity (FC) of large-scale brain networks in older adults with and without a history of LLD.
• To examine FC during a task requiring cognitive control with emotional stimuli.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional case-control study design was employed.
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted on 20 adults with LLD and 37 never-depressed adults (aged 60-88) during an emotional Stroop task.
• Network-region-to-region FC was analyzed using seed regions within the default mode, frontoparietal, dorsal attention, and salience networks.

Main Results:

• LLD patients exhibited reduced FC between salience and sensorimotor network regions, and between salience and dorsal attention network regions during incongruent emotional stimulus processing.
• The typically positive FC between these networks became negative in LLD patients.
• These aberrant FC patterns inversely correlated with vascular risk and white matter hyperintensities.

Conclusions:

• Aberrant functional coupling between the salience network and other brain networks is associated with emotional-cognitive control deficits in LLD.
• These findings contribute to the network-based model of LLD.
• The salience network is proposed as a potential therapeutic target for future interventions in LLD.