The relation between parent depressive symptoms and neural correlates of attentional control in offspring: A preliminary study.
Offspring of depressed parents are at significantly elevated risk for depressive disorders themselves; however, the specific mechanisms associated with this risk are not well known. Given the well-established link between parental depression and biased attention for negative stimuli in children, this preliminary study sought to examine the neural correlates of directing attention toward and away from emotional faces in children and adolescents in association with parent's current depressive symptoms. Forty-two youth (age 7-18 years) completed a task with conditions that manipulated whether participants were instructed to match emotional faces (explicit emotion processing) or match shapes in the context of emotional face distractors (implicit emotion processing) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results revealed a positive correlation between parent depressive symptoms and youths' recruitment of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during attempts to direct attention away (implicit processing) from negative faces. These findings were maintained after accounting for current anxiety and depressive symptoms among youth suggesting that the findings were not fully attributable to offspring's psychopathology. These preliminary findings suggest that altered dorsal ACC function may contribute to the biased attention for negative information typically demonstrated in youth at high risk for depression by disrupting efficient inhibition of negative stimuli.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. Electronic address: kburkhouse@psych.uic.edu.
Katie L
KL
Burkhouse
Department of Psychiatry, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA.
Autumn
A
Kujawa
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Kate
K
Keenan
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Heide
H
Klumpp
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Kate D
KD
Fitzgerald
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Christopher S
CS
Monk
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
K Luan
KL
Phan
D000293:Adolescent; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods
Anterior cingulate cortex; Emotion processing; Intergenerational transmission; Parental depression; Vulnerability