title: Decreased Subcortical and Increased Cortical Degree Centrality in a Nonclinical College Student Sample with Subclinical Depressive Symptoms: A Resting-State fMRI Study.
abstract: Abnormal functional connectivity (FC) at rest has been identified in clinical depressive disorder. However, very few studies have been conducted to understand the underlying neural substrates of subclinical depression. The newly proposed centrality analysis approach has been increasingly used to explore the large-scale brain network of mental diseases. This study aimed to identify the degree centrality (DC) alteration of the brain network in subclinical depressive subjects. Thirty-seven candidates with subclinical depression and 34 well-matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited from the same sample of college students. All subjects underwent a resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) scan to assess the DC of the whole brain. Compared with controls, subclinical depressive subjects displayed decreased DC in the right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), left PHG/amygdala, and left caudate and elevated DC in the right posterior parietal lobule (PPL), left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). In addition, by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, we determined that the DC values in the regions with altered FC between the two groups can be used to differentiate subclinical depressive subjects from HCs. We suggest that decreased DC in subcortical and increased DC in cortical regions might be the neural substrates of subclinical depression.
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Cuihua
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health Management, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Liu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wenhua
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Yanli
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Xiuhang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ruan
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Lingling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Science Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Shaode
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Raymond C K
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Xinhua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Xinqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiang
keywords: degree centrality; magnetic resonance imaging; resting-state functional connectivity; subclinical depression; young adults