Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals abnormal spontaneous neural activity in the brains of patients with depression accompanied by self-injurious behavior
CHEN Zhimin
GAO Liaoming
WU Ziqi
ZHENG Rongxin
YIN Honglei
WEN Ge
Abstract：Objective To investigate the correlation between spontaneous neural activity and cognitive function in patients with major depressive disorder(MDD)accompanied by self-injurious behavior utilizing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.Methods Adult patients with MDD(DSM-5)were recruited from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Nanfang Hospital,Southern Medical University from June to December 2023.Adult patients were divided into MDD+NSSI group(n=29)and MDD-NSSI group(n=34).A healthy control group(HC,n=31),matched for age,gender,and education,was also recruited.All participants completed assessments(HAMD24,HAMA,C-SSRS,FASM),cognitive testing(ANT).This experiment analyzed the differences in brain functional activity and the statistically significant characteristics of brain regions among three groups by preprocessing the original image data of the subjects and extracting the fALFF values.Meanwhile,it explored the correlation between the signals of these brain regions and clinical data,revealing the potential link between brain functional abnormalities and clinical manifestations.Results In the MDD+NSSI group,the fALFF values were increased in the left middle frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus(P<0.05)but decreased in the right anterior cingulate and paracingulate gyri(P<0.05).In the MDD-NSSI group,a decrease was observed in the right precuneus(P<0.05).The fALFF value in the left middle frontal gyrus of the MDD+NSSI group was positively correlated with HAMD scores(r=0.418,P=0.024),while in the MDD-NSSI group,the fALFF value in the right precuneus was positively correlated with HAMD scores(r=0.357,P=0.038).Additionally,in the MDD+NSSI group,the fALFF value in the left middle frontal gyrus was positively correlated with the one year C-SSRS score(r=0.396,P=0.034),while that in the right middle temporal gyrus was negatively correlated with the lifetime C-SSRS score(r=-0.390,P=0.037).Furthermore,the right anterior cingulate and paracingulate gyri showed negative correlations with the efficiency of the alerting network in the ANT test(r=-0.473,P=0.010).Conclusion The abnormal neural activities in the left middle frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus of MDD+NSSI patients may reflect changes in impulse and emotion processing.The abnormalities in the anterior cingulate and posterior cingulate gyri show crossage consistency and affect alertness.The abnormality in the precuneus is only observed in MDD+NSSI patients,indicating different emotional and cognitive processing mechanisms in the two subtypes.
Keywords：resting-state functional magnetic resonance imagingspontaneous neural activityfractional low-frequency amplitudemajor depressive disorder(MDD)non-suicidal self-injury behavior
Publication Date：2025-05-20
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：10( 535-544 )