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van den Bulk BG, Meens PH, van Lang ND, et al. Amygdala activation during emotional face processing in adolescents with affective disorders: the role of underlying depression and anxiety symptoms. Front Hum Neurosci. 2014;8:393doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393.
van den Bulk, B. G., Meens, P. H., van Lang, N. D., de Voogd, E. L., van der Wee, N. J., Rombouts, S. A., Crone, E. A., & Vermeiren, R. R. (2014). Amygdala activation during emotional face processing in adolescents with affective disorders: the role of underlying depression and anxiety symptoms. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8393. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393
van den Bulk, Bianca G, et al. "Amygdala activation during emotional face processing in adolescents with affective disorders: the role of underlying depression and anxiety symptoms." Frontiers in human neuroscience vol. 8 (2014): 393. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393
van den Bulk BG, Meens PH, van Lang ND, de Voogd EL, van der Wee NJ, Rombouts SA, Crone EA, Vermeiren RR. Amygdala activation during emotional face processing in adolescents with affective disorders: the role of underlying depression and anxiety symptoms. Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Jun 05;8:393. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393. eCollection 2014. PMID: 24926249; PMCID: PMC4046490.
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Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Jun 05;8:393. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393. eCollection 2014.

Amygdala activation during emotional face processing in adolescents with affective disorders: the role of underlying depression and anxiety symptoms.

Frontiers in human neuroscience

Bianca G van den Bulk, Paul H F Meens, Natasja D J van Lang, E L de Voogd, Nic J A van der Wee, Serge A R B Rombouts, Eveline A Crone, Robert R J M Vermeiren

Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Curium-Leiden University Medical Center Oegstgeest, Netherlands ; Brain and Development Lab, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.
  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Curium-Leiden University Medical Center Oegstgeest, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.
  3. Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Science, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  4. Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Center Leiden, Netherlands.
  5. Brain and Development Lab, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center Leiden, Netherlands.
  6. Brain and Development Lab, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.

PMID: 24926249 PMCID: PMC4046490 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00393

Abstract

Depressive and anxiety disorders are often first diagnosed during adolescence and it is known that they persist into adulthood. Previous studies often tried to dissociate depressive and anxiety disorders, but high comorbidity makes this difficult and maybe even impossible. The goal of this study was to use neuroimaging to test what the unique contribution is of depression and anxiety symptomatology on emotional processing and amygdala activation, and to compare the results with a healthy control group. We included 25 adolescents with depressive and/or anxiety disorders and 26 healthy adolescents. Participants performed an emotional face processing task while in the MRI scanner. We were particularly interested in the relation between depression/anxiety symptomatology and patterns of amygdala activation. There were no significant differences in activation patterns between the control group and the clinical group on whole brain level and ROI level. However, we found that dimensional scores on an anxiety but not a depression subscale significantly predicted brain activation in the right amygdala when processing fearful, happy and neutral faces. These results suggest that anxiety symptoms are a better predictor for differentiating activation patterns in the amygdala than depression symptoms. Although the current study includes a relatively large sample of treatment naïve adolescents with depression/anxiety disorders, results might be influenced by differences between studies in recruitment strategies or methodology. Future research should include larger samples with a more equal distribution of adolescents with a clinical diagnosis of depression and/or anxiety. To conclude, this study shows that abnormal amygdala responses to emotional faces in depression and anxiety seems to be more dependent on anxiety symptoms than on depression symptoms, and thereby highlights the need for more research to better characterize clinical groups in future studies.

Keywords: adolescence; amygdala; anxiety; depression; face processing; individual differences

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