Deficient prefrontal-amygdalar connectivity underlies inefficient face processing in adolescent major depressive disorder

This study investigated cognitive and neural mechanisms of emotional face processing in adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Thirty adolescents with MDD and 33 healthy controls performed a dynamic face- and shape-matching task. A linear ballistic accumulator model analyzed behavioral data, while dynamic causal modeling (DCM) assessed effective connectivity in the prefrontal-amygdala network. MDD adolescents showed reduced face processing efficiency, particularly for ambiguous faces, linked to increased subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) deactivation. DCM revealed altered functional coupling within a network involving the fusiform face area, lateral prefrontal cortex, sgACC, and amygdala. These findings suggest that inefficient evidence sampling and inappropriate emotional responses, due to dysfunctional coupling in the face processing network, may contribute to depressive symptomology.

David Willinger, Iliana I. Karipidis, Isabelle Häberling, Gregor Berger, Susanne Walitza, Silvia Brem