Concordant Patterns of Brain Structure in Mothers with Recurrent Depression and Their Never-Depressed Daughters

Abstract

Background: A growing body of research has demonstrated that having a mother with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the strongest predictors of depression in adolescent offspring. Few studies, however, have assessed neural markers of this increased risk for depression, or examined whether risk-related anomalies in adolescents at maternal risk for depression are related to neural abnormalities in their depressed mothers. We addressed these questions by examining concordance in brain structure in two groups of participants: mothers with a history of depression and their never-depressed daughters, and never-depressed mothers and their never-depressed daughters. Method: We scanned mothers with (remitted; RMD) and without (control; CTL) a history of recurrent episodes of depression and their never-depressed daughters, computed cortical gray matter thickness, and tested whether mothers' thickness predicted daughters' thickness. Results: Both RMD mothers and their high-risk daughters exhibited focal areas of thinner cortical gray matter compared with their CTL/low-risk counterparts. Importantly, the extent of thickness anomalies in RMD mothers predicted analogous abnormalities in their daughters; this pattern was not present in CTL/low-risk dyads. Conclusions: We identified neuroanatomical risk factors that may underlie the intergenerational transmission of risk for MDD. Our findings suggest that there is concordance in brain structure in dyads that is affected by maternal depression, and that the location, direction, and extent of neural anomalies in high-risk offspring mirror those of their recurrent depressed mothers.

Like mother like daughter: putamen activation as a mechanism underlying intergenerational risk for depression

“…Given that aberrant corticolimbic function and structure are implicated in a number of forms of psychopathology, including mood disorders, Yamagata et al posited that similarities in mother-daughter neural structure may underlie the maternal transmission of mood disorders. Consistent with this formulation, Foland-Ross et al (2016) found that daughters of mothers with a history of recurrent depression, who are at high risk for developing depression themselves, exhibited patterns of cortical thinning in bilateral fusiform gyri that mirrored cortical thinning identified in their mothers. Moreover, within the high-risk group only, mothers’ pattern of cortical thinning uniquely predicted daughters’ cortical thinning in this region.…”

“…In addition, we also examined the concordance between mothers’ and daughters’ neural response when preparing a motor response during the task in order to test whether effects are specific to striatal activation. Given prior literature pointing to two potential models of maternal inheritance of neural structure ( Foland-Ross et al , 2016 ; Yamagata et al , 2016 ), it was unclear whether we should expect to find a pattern of concordance that is specific to the RMD/RSK group, or that is similar across all mothers-daughter pairs. Thus, we tested these alternatives in our analyses.…”

“…In an effort to understand the intergenerational transmission of neural circuitry relevant to emotional processing, researchers have recently begun to examine neural concordance between parents and their offspring ( Foland-Ross et al , 2016 ; Ho et al , 2016 ; Yamagata et al , 2016 ). For example, Yamagata et al (2016) examined patterns of regional tissue volume in corticolimbic structures in parents and their children.…”

Intergenerational Neuroimaging of Human Brain Circuitry

“…(A) As in Fox et al [10], heritability of behavioral and brain phenotypes can be used to compute genetic correlations in neuroimaging data to identify regions where there is shared genetic influence is common to both phenotypes. (B) As in Yamagata et al [12], neural concordance among all parent-offspring dyads as measured by correlations can be compared and sex-specific tests can be performed.…”

“…Foland-Ross et al compared cortical thickness measurements in two groups of mothers (depressed, nondepressed) and their nondepressed daughters (categorized accordingly as high- or low-risk) [10]. Cortical thickness in regions-of-interest (ROIs) that showed significant differences between depressed and nondepressed mothers were computed for each daughter; hierarchical linear regression with mother’s cortical thickness and risk status were then used as predictors of regional cortical thickness.…”