Qingwei Li1,2, Chunbo Li3, Wenyuan Wu1, Yuan Shen1, Peijun Wang4, Gonghua Dai4, Xuchu Weng5, Yijun Liu2
1Department of Psychiatry, Tongji Hospital of Tongji University, Shanghai, China; 2Departments of Psychiatry and neuroscience, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA; 3Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China; 4Department of Radiology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji University, Shanghai, China; 5Laboratory of Brain High Function, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academic of Science, Beijing, China
The time course of the amygdala response may be relevant to the blunted behavioral response to emotional stimuli of major depressive disorder (MDD). Functional magnetic resonance imaging was explored to the emotional pictures processing in 12 first-episode unmedicated MDD subjects and 13 healthy controls (HC). Analyses focused on the temporal dynamics of the BOLD signal change in the amygdala across blocks of positive, neutral and negative emotional pictures. MDD Individuals showed delayed response to positive emotion and blunted response to negative emotional stimuli in the amygdala, which provided an explanation of the loss of interest and pleasure in MDD.