Limbic irritability and chaotic neural response during conflicting stroop task in the patients with unipolar depression.

According to recent findings activation of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is related to detecting cognitive conflict. This conflict related activation elicits autonomic responses which can be assessed by psychophysiological measures such as heart rate variability calculated as beat to beat R-R intervals (RRI). Recent findings in neuroscience also suggest that cognitive conflict is related to specific nonlinear chaotic changes of the signal generated by neural systems.