title: Neural correlates of causal attribution in negative events of depressed patients: Evidence from an fMRI study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The causal attribution of depressive patients in negative events was significantly important. However, few previous studies have explored its neural underpinnings.
  
  
  METHODS
  The current study examines the neural basis of causal attribution in negative events of depressed patients (12) compared with healthy controls (12) by using the Attribution Style Task (AST). Briefly, participants were presented with 80 sentences describing 40 positive and 40 negative social events. Participants were asked to imagine the event happening to them and select the most likely cause with a button press: 1 self (internal), 2 another person, and 3 situation (external).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Behaviorally, controls showed a self-serving bias, whereas patients demonstrated a balanced attributional pattern with the attribution scores. Our fMRI results found a significant group difference in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus in depressed participants compared to normal controls. Moreover, there was a significantly increased activation in the IPL during non-self-serving attributions in negative events of patients compared to controls. Most interestingly, we also found the BOLD signal change of the region of IPL was positively related to the duration of the illness of the patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on our findings, we may infer that a stronger activation of the IPL in depression may demonstrate that depressed patients always pay more attention to self-reference in negative events.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These interesting findings might provide a biomarker of subtle differences in brain signal alterations associated with depressive cognitive characteristics.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, PR China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, PR China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
authors.forename: Junyi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, PR China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
authors.forename: Yanqiu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, PR China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
authors.forename: Songyan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Institute of Neuroscience, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China. Electronic address: xiepeng@cqmu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Institute of Neuroscience, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China.
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Chongqing 400016, PR China; Institute of Neuroscience, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, PR China.
authors.forename: Gaoping
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, PR China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China. Electronic address: qiuj318@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009341:Negativism; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012938:Social Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Causal attribution; Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); Inferior parietal lobe (IPL); Negative events