Perceptual asymmetry differences between major depression with or without a comorbid anxiety disorder: a dichotic listening study.
Predictions that anxious and nonanxious depression would differ in perceptual asymmetry (PA), as well as in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words, were evaluated using dichotic listening tasks. A total of 149 patients having a major depressive disorder (51 with and 98 without an anxiety disorder) and 57 healthy controls were tested on fused-word and complex tone tasks. The anxious and nonanxious depression groups showed a consistent difference in PA across tasks; that is, the anxious group had a larger left-ear advantage for tones and a smaller right-ear advantage for words when compared with the nonanxious group. There was no group difference in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words. Patients having an anxious depression appear to have a greater propensity to activate right than left-hemisphere regions during auditory tasks, whereas those having a nonanxious depression have the opposite hemispheric asymmetry.
Bruder
G E
GE
Department of Biopsychology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York 10032, USA. bruderg@pi.cpmc.columbia.edu
Wexler
B E
BE
Stewart
J W
JW
Price
L H
LH
Quitkin
F M
FM
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*