Source analysis of P3a and P3b components to investigate interaction of depression and anxiety in attentional systems

Abstract

This study examined the impact of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and the comorbidity of these disorders on the regional electrophysiological features of brain activity. Sixty-four-channel event-related potentials (ERP) were acquired during a visual oddball task in patients with depressive disorder, patients with anxiety disorders, patients with comorbid depressive and anxiety disorders and healthy subjects. An fMRI-constrained source model was applied to ERP to identify different cortical activities in the patient and control groups. Comorbid patients showed an abnormal frontal-greater-than-parietal P3b topography in the right hemisphere and the highest P3a amplitude at frontal and central sites at the scalp midline. For P3b, depressed patients showed decreased right-lateralized activity in the precentral sulcus (PrCS) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Anxious patients demonstrated hyperactive prefrontal cortices (PFC). Comorbid patients presented decreased activity in the cingulate gyrus, right PrCS and right PPC and increased activity in the left PFC and left insular (INS). For P3a, hyperactive left PrCS was found in comorbid patients. Comorbid patients showed both anxiety-related and depression-related activity. A superimposition effect of depression and anxiety was identified with (1) aggravated hypo-function of the right-lateralized dorsal attention and salience networks and (2) complicated anxiety-related hyper-function of the left-lateralized ventral attention and salience networks.

The Prevalence of Depression, Anxiety and Stress and Their Associated Factors in College Students

“…In fact, Long et al [ 40 ] suggest that there is a bidirectional, systematic pattern between the development of depressive and anxious syndromes in young adults. In addition, previous studies [ 41 , 42 , 43 ] have identified similarities in the neurobiology and genetic structure of depression and anxiety. Another possible explanation for the association between depression, anxiety and stress is the fact that they share a significant number of risk factors and symptoms.…”

Effects of Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS) on the P300 and Alpha-Amylase Level: A Pilot Study

“…Due to its effects on affective and cognitive functioning, tVNS could also be of special relevance for clinical research. Several studies have shown that the P3b amplitude is reduced in different mental disorders including, schizophrenia (e.g., Pfefferbaum et al, 1989 ), mood disorders (e.g., Bruder et al, 2009 ; Rongrong et al, 2015 ; Lang et al, 2017 ), or anxiety disorders (e.g., Li et al, 2015 ; Lang et al, 2017 ). This suggests that the P3b amplitude increase through vagus nerve stimulation may reflect symptomatology improvement in patients diagnosed with these disorders.…”

Low-frequency parietal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces fear and anxiety

“…This threat-related hypervigilance is a prominent symptom of clinical anxiety, cutting across multiple diagnoses 2 , and these results suggest that it may be mediated by a hyperactive parietal cortex 33,34,36,38,39 . This diminished attention control may explain why (1) individuals with specific phobias may show attentional biases to threatening information [40][41][42][43] , (2) generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients have difficulties maintaining attentional focus [44][45][46][47] anxiety interferes with the manipulation of items in working memory 29 . If this is the case, then inhibitory parietal rTMS should also reduce the attention bias to threat seen in anxiety patients.…”