Gray matter reduction associated with emotion regulation in female outpatients with major depressive disorder: a voxel-based morphometry study.

Objective: Though emotion dysregulation is the key feature in major depressive disorder, and structural changes in brain areas of depressed patients have been found, it is unknown how these regional volume alterations correlate with the ability to regulate emotion in the depressed population.

Method: We examined the gray matter concentration (GMC) and volume (GMV) in 17 depressed patients and 17 healthy volunteers using a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study. Images were acquired using a 1.5 T MRI scanner, and were spatially normalized and segmented. Statistical comparisons were performed using the general linear model. The identified volumetric alterations in the depressed participants were correlated with their performance on an emotion regulation task that involved reduction of positive or negative emotions to emotional pictures that were selected according to their individual ratings.

Results: The depressed participants showed specific difficulty in regulating negative emotion, though not positive emotion, which was associated with reduced GMV and concentration in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the inferior orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Decreased GMC in the superior temporal cortex was also found in people with major depressive disorder.

Conclusions: Abnormal structures in the ACC and OFC and the dysregulation of negative emotion may relate to the pathology of major depressive disorder.