Brain activation to emotional words in depressed vs healthy subjects

Depression involves either enhanced processing of negative stimuli or diminished processing of positive stimuli. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess brain activation in depressed vs healthy participants. Fifteen participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 15 controls were scanned during a lexical decision task involving neutral, happy, sad, and threat-related words. For happy words, depressed subjects exhibited less activation than did controls to happy words in fronto-temporal and limbic regions. For sad words, depressed subjects showed more activation than did controls in the inferior parietal lobule and less activation in the superior temporal gyrus and cerebellum, suggesting a complex activation pattern that varies for neural sub-circuits that may be associated with different cognitive or behavioral processes.