Anhedonia correlates with functional connectivity of the nucleus accumbens subregions in patients with major depressive disorder

• Published in: NeuroImage clinical Vol. 30; p. 102599
• Main Authors: Liu, Rui, Wang, Yun, Chen, Xiongying, Zhang, Zhifang, Xiao, Le, Zhou, Yuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Inc 01.01.2021; Elsevier
• Subjects: Anhedonia; Depressive Disorder, Major - diagnostic imaging; Functional connectivity; Gyrus Cinguli; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Major depressive disorder; Nucleus accumbens; Nucleus Accumbens - diagnostic imaging; Radiology; Regular; Functional connectivity; Nucleus accumbens; Anhedonia; Major depressive disorder
• ISSN: 2213-1582; 2213-1582
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102599

•Decreased rsFC between the NAc subdivisions and the frontoparietal regions in MDD.•The MDD patients differed from the HCs in the neural correlates of anhedonia indicated by the rsFC of NAc subdivisions.•Results emphasized the regionally-dependent modulation of depression on the neural correlates of anhedonia. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is an important region in reward circuit that has been linked with anhedonia, which is a characteristic symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, the relationship between the functional connectivity of the NAc subregions and anhedonia in MDD patients remains unclear. We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans from fifty-one subjects (23 MDD patients and 28 healthy controls). We assessed subjects’ trait anhedonia with the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS). Seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) was conducted for each of the NAc subregions (bilateral core-like and shell-like subdivisions) separately to identify regions whose rsFCs with the NAc subregions were altered in the MDD patients and regions whose rsFCs with the NAc subregions showed different correlates with anhedonia between the MDD patients and the healthy controls. Compared with the health controls, the MDD patients showed decreased rsFCs of the right NAc core-like subdivision with the left mid-anterior orbital prefrontal cortex and the right inferior parietal lobe as well as decreased rsFC of the left NAc core-like subdivision with the right middle frontal gyrus. Moreover, the severity of anhedonia by the group interaction was significant for the rsFC of the right NAc shell-like subdivision with the subgenual/pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and the rsFC of the right NAc core-like subdivision with the precuneus. We found that the neural correlates of anhedonia indicated by the rsFCs of the NAc subregions were modulated by depression. The modulation effect was regionally-dependent. These findings enrich our understanding of the neural basis of anhedonia in MDD.