title: Abnormal brain activation during directed forgetting of negative memory in depressed patients.
abstract: The frequent occurrence of uncontrollable negative thoughts and memories is a troubling aspect of depression. Thus, knowledge on the mechanism underlying intentional forgetting of these thoughts and memories is crucial to develop an effective emotion regulation strategy for depressed individuals. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that depressed participants cannot intentionally forget negative memories. However, the neural mechanism underlying this process remains unclear. In this study, participants completed the directed forgetting task in which they were instructed to remember or forget neutral or negative words. Standard univariate analysis based on the General Linear Model showed that the depressed participants have higher activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), superior parietal gyrus (SPG), and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) than the healthy individuals. The results indicated that depressed participants recruited more frontal and parietal inhibitory control resources to inhibit the TBF items, but the attempt still failed because of negative bias. We also used the Support Vector Machine to perform multivariate pattern classification based on the brain activation during directed forgetting. The pattern of brain activity in directed forgetting of negative words allowed correct group classification with an overall accuracy of 75% (P=0.012). The brain regions which are critical for this discrimination showed abnormal activation when depressed participants were attempting to forget negative words. These results indicated that the abnormal neural circuitry when depressed individuals tried to forget the negative words might provide neurobiological markers for depression.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Wenjing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Qunlin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Peiduo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Hongsheng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: School of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Dongtao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: Zhangql@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qinglin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: qiuj318@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003863:Depression / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology
keywords: Depression; Directed forgetting; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Inhibitory control; Multi-voxel pattern analysis