MDD patients with early life stress deactivate the frontostriatal network during facial emotion recognition paradigm: A functional MRI study

INTRODUCTION: Early life stress (ELS) is a significant risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD) in adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using face emotion processing paradigms have found altered blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses in the cortico-limbic network both in individuals exposed to ELS and in patients with MDD. Thus, early life stress may have a long-lasting impact on brain areas responsible for the processing of socio-affective cues. OBJECTIVES: By applying a facial emotion recognition (FER) fMRI paradigm, we examined the long-term effect of childhood adversity on brain activity in MDD patients with and without ELS. METHODS: MDD patients without ELS (MDD, N=19), those with ELS (MDD+ELS, N=21), and healthy controls (HC, N=21) matched for age, sex, and intelligence quotient underwent fMRI scanning while performing a block design FER task with faces expressing negative emotions. The severity of ELS was assessed with the 28-item Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. RESULTS: Both MDD and MDD+ELS patients were slightly impaired in recognizing sad faces. Statistical analysis of brain activity found that MDD+ELS patients had significantly reduced negative BOLD responses in the right anterior paracingulate gyrus, subcallosal cortex accumbens compared to HCs. Moreover, the MDD+ELS group had a significantly increased negative BOLD signal in the right postcentral and precentral gyri relative to the HC group. MDD+ELS patients had reduced negative BOLD response in their anterior paracingulate gyrus compared to the MDD group. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support that adult MDD patients with significant ELS are impaired in facial emotion recognition and they display functional alterations in the frontostriatal circuits. DISCLOSURE: This work was financially supported by the Hungarian Brain Research Program (2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002)