title: Lost emotion: Disrupted brain-based tracking of dynamic affective episodes in anxiety and depression.
abstract: In our day-to-day lives we are confronted with dynamic sensory inputs that elicit a continuously evolving emotional response. Insight into the brain basis of the dynamic nature of emotional reactivity may be critical for understanding chronic symptoms of anxiety and depression. Here, individuals with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and healthy controls watched a video with dynamic affective content while fMRI activity was recorded. Across all participants there was a large-scale tracking of affective content in emotion processing regions and the default mode network. Anxious and depressed individuals displayed less brain-based coupling within these regions and the extent of this uncoupling correlated with variability in emotional numbing. Thus, abnormal neural tracking of affective information during dynamic emotional episodes appears to represent a disconnection between affective cues in the environment and an individual's response to these cues-providing a putative neural basis for context insensitive affective reactivity and emotional numbing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, 1401 Presque Isle Avenue Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI, USA. Electronic address: carlsonjm79@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Joshua M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rubin
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA; Department of Radiology, A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Lilianne R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Mujica-Parodi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000523:psychology; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000523:psychology; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003863:Depression / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000523:psychology; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Amygdala; Default mode network; Generalized anxiety disorder; Major depressive disorder; Natural vision