Brain imaging studies on neural basis of self reference in depression

抑郁症的特征是对负面情绪刺激的自我参照处理增强。影像学研究表明，内侧前额叶（MPFC）和前扣带皮层（ACC）的激活与自我参照加工有关。然而，这种激活模式是否发生在抑郁个体的自我参照处理的情绪刺激尚未被调查的日期。为此，我们进行了一些实验研究，得到了以下结果。与正常对照组相比，抑郁症患者在消极词的自我参照加工过程中，MPFC和ACC表现出过度活跃。认知行为疗法后抑郁症患者MPFC和ACC在负性刺激的自我参照加工过程中的活动降低。这些结果表明，抑郁症状的改善与消极情绪自我参照加工过程中MPFC和ACC激活的减弱有关。

Depression is characterized by enhanced self-referential processing of negative emotional stimuli. Imaging studies have suggested that activation of both the medial prefrontal(MPFC) and anterior cingulate cortices(ACC) is associated with self-referential processing. However, whether this pattern of activation occurs in depressed individuals during the self-referential processing of the emotional stimuli had not been investigated to date. Thus, we have studied some experiments and got some following results. Compared with the normal controls, the depressed patients showed hyperactivity in the MPFC and the ACC during the self-referential processing of negative words. Activity in the MPFC and the ACC during self-referential processing of negative stimuli were decreased in the depressive patients following CBT. These results showed that improvement of depressive symptoms was associated with attenuation of the MPFC and the ACC activation during self-referential processing of negative emotion.