Emotional arousal modulation of right temporoparietal cortex in depression depends on parental depression status in women: first evidence.

Background: Structural and Electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in right temporoparietal cortex have been associated with family history of depression (FH). Here we investigate if functional abnormalities in this area, indexed by attenuated responses to emotionally arousing stimuli, are also family-history-dependent.

Methods: Neuromagnetic activity for emotional and neutral complex scenes was recorded by Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 depressed patients without, 8 depressed patients with FH, and 15 healthy controls. Emotion-sensitive neuronal steady state responses were cortical source localized and tested for group-by-emotion interactions.

Results: The group-by-emotion interaction (F(4, 80)=4.4, p=0.004) was explained by a significant modulation of right temporoparietal cortex activity by emotional arousal in controls and patients without FH. This effect was reduced in FH positive patients. The difference between patient groups remained when clinical variables such as symptom severity were accounted for.

Limitations: All patients were medicated, but differences between patient groups remained after accounting for medication dosage. Further, the sample size was limited, but data-driven resampling statistics showed the robustness of our effects. Finally, the sample consists of female patients only and we cannot generalize our results to male samples.

Conclusions: Patients with FH show impaired recruitment of attention-relevant cortical circuitry by emotional stimuli. The neuroanatomical locus of this effect accords with previous reports on structural abnormalities and electrophysiological deficits at rest in individuals with FH. Our results speak to the relevance of right temporoparietal dysfunction in emotional information processing as a potential endophenotype for depression with FH.