Partly recovery and compensation in anterior cingulate cortex after SSRI treatment-evidence from multi-voxel pattern analysis over resting state fMRI in depression

Yujie Zhang; Junneng Shao; Xinyi Wang; Cong Pei; Shuqiang Zhang; Zhijian Yao; Qing Lu

doi:10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.071

Partly recovery and compensation in anterior cingulate cortex after SSRI treatment-evidence from multi-voxel pattern analysis over resting state fMRI in depression

J Affect Disord. 2023 Jan 1:320:404-412. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.071. Epub 2022 Sep 27.

Authors

Yujie Zhang¹, Junneng Shao¹, Xinyi Wang¹, Cong Pei¹, Shuqiang Zhang¹, Zhijian Yao², Qing Lu³

Affiliations

¹ School of Biological Sciences & Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China; Child Development and Learning Science, Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China; Nanjing Brain Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China. Electronic address: zjyao@njmu.edu.cn.
³ School of Biological Sciences & Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China; Child Development and Learning Science, Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education, China. Electronic address: luq@seu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36179779
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.071

Abstract

Background: Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an essential role in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) and its treatment. However, it's still unclear whether the effects of disease and antidepressant treatment on ACC perform diversely in neural mechanisms.

Methods: Fifty-nine MDD patients completed resting-state fMRI scanning twice at baseline and after 12-week selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatment, respectively in acute state and remission state. Fifty-nine demographically matched healthy controls were enrolled. Using fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) in ACC as features, we performed multi-voxel pattern analysis over pretreatment MDD patients vs health control (HC), and over pretreatment MDD patients vs posttreatment MDD patients.

Results: Discriminative regions in ACC for MDD impairment and changes after antidepressants were obtained. The intersection set and difference set were calculated to form ACC subregions of recovered, unrecovered and compensative, respectively. The recovered ACC subregion mainly distributed in rostral ACC (80 %) and the other two subregions had nearly equal distribution over dorsal ACC and rostral ACC. Furthermore, only the compensative subregion had significant changed functional connectivity with cingulo-opercular control network (CON) after antidepressant treatment.

Limitations: The number of subjects was relatively small. The results need to be validated with larger sample sizes and multisite data.

Conclusions: This finding suggested that the local function of ACC was partly recovered on regulating emotion after antidepressant by detecting the common subregional targets of depression impairment and antidepressive effect. Besides, changed fALFF in the compensative ACC subregion and its connectivity with CON may partly compensate for the cognition deficits.

Keywords: Anterior cingulate cortex; Antidepressant treatment; Major depressive disorder; Multi-voxel pattern analysis; Posttreatment; Pretreatment.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Antidepressive Agents / pharmacology
Antidepressive Agents / therapeutic use
Depression
Depressive Disorder, Major* / diagnostic imaging
Depressive Disorder, Major* / drug therapy
Gyrus Cinguli*
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors / pharmacology
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors / therapeutic use

Substances

Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors
Antidepressive Agents