Abnormal Voxel-Wise Degree Centrality in Patients With Late-Life Depression: A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Jun Li; Hengfen Gong; Hongmin Xu; Qiong Ding; Naying He; Ying Huang; Ying Jin; Chencheng Zhang; Valerie Voon; Bomin Sun; Fuhua Yan; Shikun Zhan

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2019.01024

Abnormal Voxel-Wise Degree Centrality in Patients With Late-Life Depression: A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Front Psychiatry. 2020 Jan 31:10:1024. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.01024. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Jun Li¹, Hengfen Gong², Hongmin Xu³, Qiong Ding⁴, Naying He³, Ying Huang², Ying Jin², Chencheng Zhang¹, Valerie Voon⁵, Bomin Sun¹, Fuhua Yan³, Shikun Zhan¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Functional Neurosurgery, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, Shanghai Pudong New Area Mental Health Center, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Radiology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Neural and Intelligence Engineering Center, Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Objectives: Late-life depression (LLD) has negative impacts on somatic, emotional and cognitive domains of the lives of patients. Elucidating the abnormality in the brain networks of LLD patients could help to strengthen the understanding of LLD pathophysiology, however, the studies exploring the spontaneous brain activity in LLD during the resting state remain limited. This study aimed at identifying the voxel-level whole-brain functional connectivity changes in LLD patients.

Methods: Fifty patients with late-life depression (LLD) and 33 healthy controls were recruited. All participants underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan to assess the voxel-wise degree centrality (DC) changes in the patients. Furthermore, DC was compared between two patient subgroups, the late-onset depression (LOD) and the early-onset depression (EOD).

Results: Compared with the healthy controls, LLD patients showed increased DC in the inferior parietal lobule, parahippocampal gyrus, brainstem and cerebellum (p < 0.05, AlphaSim-corrected). LLD patients also showed decreased DC in the somatosensory and motor cortices and cerebellum (p < 0.05, AlphaSim-corrected). Compared with EOD patients, LOD patients showed increased centrality in the superior and middle temporal gyrus and decreased centrality in the occipital region (p < 0.05, AlphaSim-corrected). No significant correlation was found between the DC value and the symptom severity or disease duration in the patients after the correction for multiple comparisons.

Conclusions: These findings indicate that the intrinsic abnormality of network centrality exists in a wide range of brain areas in LLD patients. LOD patients differ with EOD patients in cortical network centrality. Our study might help to strengthen the understanding of the pathophysiology of LLD and the potential neural substrates underlie related emotional and cognitive impairments observed in the patients.

Keywords: degree centrality; functional magnetic resonance imaging; late-life depression; onset age; resting state.

Grants and funding

MR/P008747/1/MRC_/Medical Research Council/United Kingdom