Common and specific amygdala-function perturbations in 2 depressed versus anxious adolescents (original) (raw)

Participants: Eighty-seven adolescents matched on age, gender, intelligence, and social class: 26 with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD; 14 with and 12 without anxiety disorders), 16 with anxiety disorders but no depression, and 45 with no psychopathology. Main Outcome Measures: Blood oxygenated level dependent signal in the amygdala, measured using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. During imaging, participants viewed facial expressions (neutral, fearful, angry, happy) while attention was constrained (afraid, hostility, nose width ratings) or unconstrained (passive-viewing). Results: Left and right amygdala activation differed as a function of diagnosis, facial expression, and attention-condition both when comorbid MDD/anxiety patients were included and excluded (group-by-emotion-by-attention interactions: p-values≤.03). Focusing on fearful-face-viewing events, anxiety and MDD patients both differed in amygdala responses from healthy participants and from each other during passive-viewing. However, both MDD and anxiety patients, relative to healthy participants, exhibited similar signs of amygdala hyper-activation to fearful faces when rating subjectively experienced fear. Conclusions: Adolescent MDD and anxiety disorders exhibit common and distinct functional neural correlates during face processing. Attention modulates the degree to which common or distinct amygdala perturbations manifest in these patient groups, relative to healthy peers.