Antidepressant treatment normalizes hypoactivity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during emotional interference processing in major depression

Background depression (MDD) is characterized by altered emotion processing and deficits in cognitive control. In cognitive interference tasks, patients with MDD have shown excessive amygdala activity and under-recruitment of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of antidepressant treatment on anomalous neural activity in cognitive-control and emotion-processing circuitry. s onal magnetic resonance imaging was conducted on depressed patients (n = 23) (both before and after antidepressant treatment) compared with matched controls (n = 18) while they performed a cognitive task involving attended and unattended fear-related stimuli. s eight weeks of SSRI antidepressant treatment, patients with depression showed significantly increased DLPFC activity to unattended fear-related stimuli and no longer differed from controls in either DLPFC or amygdala activity. sions results suggest that antidepressant treatment increases DLPFC under-activity during cognitive tasks that include emotional interference. tions mple was fairly homogeneous and this may limit generalizability.