Objective To explore the impact of the variable number of tandem repeats of monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA-uVNTR) on the intensity of brain activation during the recognition of facial expression in patients with depression and healthy controls.Methods 28 cases of depression,as well as 33 healthy controls who were matched in gender, age and years of education were divided into different genotypes with the methods of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and 1.5% agarose gel electrophoresis separation.61 cases were scanned to compare the intensity of brain activation in the recognition of happy, sad and neutral facial expression.Results In healthy controls,cases with high-activity genotype showed increased activation in left cuneus,left inferior frontal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule in comparision with carriers of low-activity genotype.In the depressed, compared with patients with low-activity genotype, cases with high-activity genotype decreased activation in bilateral putamen, left postcentral gyrus, left fusiform gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus and right thalamus.Conclusion Healthy controls with high-activity genotype shows the trend of priority for the identification of negative emotion,this genotype may be one of the risk factors for normal people suffering from depression.Patients with high-activity genotype is associated with the inhibitory of positive emotional state, this may attribute partly to the emotional symptoms in such kind of patients more serious.

ObjectiveTo study information transmission circumstances within the neural circuits related to the attentional controls of the mate depression patients.MethodsTwelve unipolar depression patients and twelve age- and education- matched healthy controls were involved in the Stroop word-color interference test to detect the variation of brain inhibitory function by Magnetoencephalography scanning.ResultsCompared with the healthy controls,the abnormally activities in depressed patients during in chronological order were separately as follow:decreased activation in the left postcentral gyrus ( t =3.10 ),the right superior frontal gyrus ( t =2.16 ),the left middle frontal gyrus (t=2.64),the left parietal lobe (t=2.89),the right middle temporal grus( t=1.92),the right superior temporal gyrus(t=2.84),the right insula(t=3.03),the right precuneus(t=2.98),the bilateral middle frontal gyros ( t =3.64,t =2.25 ),the right postcentral gyrus ( t =2.20),the right cingulate gyrus ( t =4.04 ),the bilateral precuneus ( t =2.79,t =1.87 ) ;increased activation in the left caudate body ( t =1.91 ),the left pulvinar ( t =2.56),the left middle temporal gyrus( t =1.89),the left precentral gyrus( t =2.02) (P ＜ 0.05,uncorrected).ConclusionThe abnormal activation in the brain regions related with attentional control processing is detected in the male recurrent unipolar recurrent major depression,performances of limbic system increased and.cortex declined more in the recurrent depressed.

Objective To investigate the interconnection of the executive control network in major depressive disorder when they recognized the sad facial stimuli,and to discuss the aberrant mechanism of emotion processing.Methods Twenty major depressive patients and 20 well-matched healthy volunteers participated in the experiment.The brain actions of all subjects were recorded by the magnetoencephalography (MEG) when they were required to distinguish the emotion face.Based on prior knowledge,the interested brain area consisted of the primary visual cortex (V1),the orbitofrontal cortex(OFC),the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC),the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC).Then constructing three competing models to select an optimal model by the method of dynamic causal model(DCM),finally the differences of the effective connections of the optimal model between the depressed patients and healthy controls were analyzed.Results According to the results of Bayesian model selection (BMS),model 1 had the most exceedance probability of 0.80 with the features that there were bidirectional modulatory connections between the OFC,ACC and DLPFC.Given the best model,the parameters of effective connectivity of the optimal model were extracted,and then two-sample t-test over the model 1 was adopted.The modulatory effective connectivity from the OFC to the DLPFC in both hemisphere(t=-2.73,P=0.0096;t=-3.01,P=0.0046) and the OFC to the ACC (t=-2.93,P=0.0057) in the left hemisphere were significantly reduced in MDD.Conclusion There exists abnormal function of executive control network in depressed patients,the decreased effective connections between the OFC and the DLPFC,as well as the OFC and the ACC,may have correlation with the negative

Objective To investigate whether there is exists optimal effective connections of prefrontal-amygdala in patients with major depressive disorder when they recognize dynamic positive face expressions with the technology of magnetoencephalograph (MEG),and discuss the possible aberrant mechanism of emotion processing.Methods Twenty major depressive patients and 20 well-matched healthy volunteer controls participated in the experiment.The regions of interested brain area included the primary visual cortex (V1),the precuneus (PQ),the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC),the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC),the amygdala (AMYG).After constructing three putative models,dynamic causal model was used to select an optimal model,then extracted all the effective connection parameters and conducted t-test under the overall optimal model between-group comparison.Results The bayesian model selection (BMS) indicated that model with top-down modulate connections between DLPFC-ACC,DLPFC-AMYG and ACC-AMYG was the most superior model,whose exceedance probability was 0.41.In the fight hemisphere of patient group,the endogenous connectivity from AMYG to ACC significantly decreased compared to healthy controls (t=-2.21,P=0.033),while the endogenous connectivity from ACC to DLPFC was enhanced significandy (t=2.50,P=0.017),which was the same with the endogenous connectivity from AMYG to DLPFC (t=2.10,P=0.040).Conclusion The effective connections of prefrontal-amygdala in major depressive disorder are exactly impaired,which may indicate that major depressive disorder have a bias toward negative.While depressed patients don' t show abnormality in the modulate connectivity under happy stimulus.

Objective To explore the differences of the degree and distribution of hub regions of the brain structural networks between the schizophrenia and healthy and then analysis the importance of brain regions in the information transmission in across the whole brain.Methods The diffusion tensor imaging data were obtained from 22 schizophrenia patients and 24 healthy controls.The whole cerebral cortex was parcellated into 90 regions by the anatonical label map.Tractography was performed in the whole cerebral cortex of each subject to reconstruct white matter tracts of the brain using the fiber assignment by continuous tracking (FACT) algorithm.And then the brain structural binary networks were constructed using the complex network theory.The average degree of the network and the degree of the nodes in the network between the brain structural networks of both groups were examined by two sample t-tests.Results The average degree of the brain structural network in the patient group (7.82±0.56) decreased significantly when compared with the control group (8.17 ±0.56; P=0.04).The degree of the nodes in the brain structural network of the patient group (the left hippocampus:11.41 ± 1.84; the left parahippocampal gyrus:6.41± 1.33 ; the left calcarine fissure:11.50±2.97 ; the left fusiform gyrus:8.27± 1.83) decreased significantly when compared with the control group (14.43±2.26; 8.54±2.15; 14.79±2.80; 10.25± 1.36; all P＜0.01,survived critical FDR threshold for multiple comparisons).And the distribution of the hub regions in the temporal and occipital lobes of the patient group was difference from that of the control group.Conclusion The importance of the hippocampus and the brain regions in the occipital lobe is decrease for the information transmission across the whole brain.The damage of the topological properties of these brain regions maybe related to the disorder of the transmission and integration of information in the brain of the schizophrenia.

Objective To explore the differences of the global efficiency of the brain structural networks between the male paranoid schizophrenia and male healthy and its relationship with the psychotic symptoms of the schizophrenia.Methods The diffusion tensor imaging data were obtained from 27 male paranoid schizophrenia patients and 28 male healthy controls.The whole cerebral cortex was parcellated into 90 regions by the anatomical label map.Tractography was performed in the whole cerebral cortex of each subject to reconstruct white matter tracts of the brain using fiber assignment by continuous tracking(FACT) algorithm.And then the brain structural binary networks were constructed using the complex network theory.The average global efficiency of the brain network and the global efficiency of the nodes of both groups were examined by two sample t-test and its relationship with the psychotic symptoms in the male paranoid schizophrenia was explored by the correlation analysis.Results Compared with control group,the average global efficiency of the brain network of the patients decreased significantly (7.87±0.56,8.17±0.56,P=0.005),and the global efficiency of the nodes in the brain network of the patient decreased significantly in the left superior frontal gyrus (orbital part) (P=0.00025),the left superior parietal gyrus (P=0.00011),the left cuneus (P=0.00012) and the left putamen (P=0.00032),all survived FDR correction.Significant negative correlation was found between the global efficiency of the left putamen and the total scores (r=-0.43,P=0.03),the positive scores (r=-0.41,P=0.03) and the cognitive scores (r=-0.40,P=0.04) of PANSS.Conclusion The decreased global efficiency of the left frontal,parietal and occipital lobes and the subcortical structures lead to the occurrence of schizophrenia.And the reduced efficiency of the subcortical structures is associated with the positive symptoms and the abnormal cognitive function of the patients.

Objective To investigate the small-worldness and the betweenness centrality of the nodes in the brain structural networks and its relationship with the course and the central role of the brain regions in the transmission of information across the whole brain in depression.Methods The diffusion tensor imaging data were obtained from 27 depression patients and 33 healthy controls.The brain structural networks were constructed using the complex network theory.Results The brain structural networks had small-world properties in both groups.When compared with the healthy,the betweenness centrality of the nodes of the networks in depression significantly decreased in right superior frontal gyms (orbital part) (P=0.00035,region survived critical FDR threshold for multiple comparisons),and left putamen (P=0.00054,region survived critical FDR threshold for multiple comparisons).Significant negative correlation was found between the betweenness centrality of left hippocampus and the course in the depression(r=0.50,P=0.016).Conclusion Both of the brain structural networks in depression patients and normal people have the property of small-worldness.But the central role of orbit frontal cortex and putamen in the transmission of information across the whole brain is declined,and the betweenness centrality of hippocampus is negatively related with the course in the depression.

ObjectiveTo investigate the variation of executive function of fronto-cingulate cortex in spatio-temporal sequence in recurrent depressed patients.MethodsEighteen recurrent depressed patients and twenty-one age-,gender- and education- matched healthy controls were involved in the Stroop word-color interference test to detect the executive function of anterior cingulate and prefrontal regions by magnetoencephaloraphy scanning.Results 1.Compared to healthy controls,the increased activation of brain regions in depressed patients during different time periods were separately shown as follows( t represents activation strength):( 1 ) 100 ～ 200 ms:the right anterior cingulate gyrus ( t =1.81,T value means activation strength),the bilateral medial frontal gyrus ( t =1.91,t =1.86),the left superior frontal gyms( t =1.79 ),the right middle frontal gyrus( t =1.82 ),the right inferior frontal gyrus ( t =1.82 ).( 2 ) 200 ～ 300 ms:the left anterior cingulate gyrus ( t =1.82 ).( 3 ) 250 ～ 350 ms:the left anterior cingulate gyrus ( t =2.67 ),the left medial frontal gyrus ( t =2.43 ),the left inferior frontal gyrus ( t=1.91 ).(4)300 ～400ms:the left anterior frontal gyrus(t=2.26),the bilateral inferior gyrus( t=1.97,t=2.66),the left medial frontal gyrus(t=2.35).(5)350 ～450ms:the left anterior cingulate gyrus(t=2.02),the left medial frontal gyrus ( t =2.00),the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus ( t =1.74,t =1.78 ).( 6 ) 400 ～ 500 ms:the left anterior cingulate gyrus( t=2.01 ),the left medial frontal gyrus( t =1.97).2.Compared to healthy controls,patients showed decreased activation in the left middle frontal gyms ( t =1.79) and the left superior gyrus(t =1.76) in 200 ～ 300 ms.ConclusionExecutive dysfunction is reflected in depressed patients with the activation inefficiency in anterior cingulate and prefrontal regions in spatio-temporal sequence.

Objective To explore the resting state cortical activity and frontal asymmetry in alpha oscillations in bipolar depressive patients and its relationship with clinical symptoms. Methods Twelve bipolar depressive patients (pa?tient group) and twenty-four well-matched healthy volunteer (control group) were underwent whole head MEG recording. Individual spectral power and frontal asymmetry index were calculated by using permutation test to discover the differenc?es in δ, θ, α1, α2, α3, β bands between the two groups among the regions of interested (bilateral central, frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe). The correlation analysis were used to analyze the association between power of brain regions with significant difference and the Hamilton depression rating scale17 scores as well as factor items in patients. Results Compared with the control group, the activity of various regions was increased in the patient group as follows:theδband in the left central and left occipital lobes, theθband in the left occipital lobe, theβband in left cen?tral, right frontal, left parietal lobe and right parietal lobe. The power ofα2 andα3 frequency bands was decreased in the bilateral temporal lobes (P<0.05, uncorrected). A negative correlation was observed between the right temporalα3 power and recognition item scores for bipolar depression (P<0.05). Conclusion The present study suggests that bipolar depres?sive patients have impaired neural activity at many bands and the symptom of cognitive impairment may be associated with dysfunction ofα3 band.