Kirstine Carter1, Wendy Ringe1,
Cybeles Onuegbulem1, Kaundinya Gopinath2, Richard
Briggs2
1Department of Psychiatry,
UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 2Department
of Radiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States
Negatively-biased emotional information processing is a salient feature in depression, and the hippocampus has commonly been implicated as dysfunctional in depression. This study presents an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging technique suited to explore hippocampal response to positive (Pos) and negative (Neg) stimuli in depressed (DEP) and healthy adults (CON). Results showed left hippocampal activation: DEP>CON during Neg, and CON>DEP during Pos. These data suggest a selective role of the hippocampus in the processing of the emotional valence of external stimuli that appears to be related to the intrinsic mood state of the subject