Review Explores Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex in Depression

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) —a region of the brain involved in processing emotions and reward—plays a key role in major depressive disorder, wrote the authors of areview article inMolecular Psychiatry. They describe evidence supporting the different ways that dysfunction in the OFC contributes to major depression and how conventional antidepressants only mitigate some of these problems.“Despite strong evidence for anatomic and functional heterogeneity within the OFC, some studies have treated this region as a unified whole,” wrote Bei Zhang, M.D., of Fudan University in China and colleagues. “Our proposal, which distinguishes between the medial and lateral OFC in a reward an d non-reward/punishment framework, describes functional differentiation within the OFC, and importantly, proposes how this differentiation is associated with different symptoms of [major depressive disorder].”The authors reviewed numerous neuroimaging studies comparing the brain structure and brain activity of people with or without depression. They reported that people with major depression have reduced connectivity between the medial OFC (the middle segment of the region) and other brain regions that are involved in emotional learning, such as the amygdala. Zhang and colleagues suggested that lower connectivity between these regions may reduce individuals ’ sensitivity to positive rewards, leading to greater anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure). In contrast, people with major de...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: amygdala anterior cingulate cortex depression major depressive disorder Molecular Psychiatry orbitofrontal cortex review Source Type: research