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Cognitive vulnerability and implicit emotional processing: imbalance in frontolimbic brain areas?

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Abstract

It has been proposed that the neural basis for cognitive vulnerability to depression involves an imbalance in frontolimbic activity during the processing of cues with a negative affective value. Although the question is central to cognitive theory, whether this association is amplified by diagnosis of an affective disorder or recent life stress has not been investigated. A composite cognitive vulnerability score based on questionnaire assessment was used to predict neural responses to negative emotional stimuli in N = 112 participants. Potential moderating effects of psychiatric diagnosis and negative life events were examined. Main and interaction effects were tested against a threshold of p < .05, family-wise error (FWE) corrected at the cluster level, and the results were small-volume corrected in regions of interest. Cognitive vulnerability predicted higher activation of superior parietal areas (p FWE < .01) for negative than for positive faces. The association was significantly stronger in healthy participants. For negative versus control stimuli, cognitive vulnerability predicted higher ventrolateral prefrontal and subgenual anterior cingulate activation (p FWE < .05) to equal extents in both groups. We found no evidence for an association with amygdala activation. Life events did not moderate the findings. We concluded that cognitive vulnerability was associated with higher activation of frontoparietal areas during an implicit emotional task. These higher levels of activation may potentially reflect increased effort being required to ignore irrelevant negative emotional information in vulnerable populations.

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Author note

We are very grateful for the contributions of all the participants and the staffs of the participating institutions. The infrastructure for the NESDA study (available at www.nesda.nl) is funded, in part, by the Geestkracht program of the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw, Grant 10-000-1002) and is supported, in part, by the participating universities and mental health care organizations: VU University Medical Center, GGZ inGeest, Arkin, Leiden University Medical Center, GGZ Rivierduinen, University Medical Center Groningen, Lentis, GGZ Friesland, GGZ Drenthe, the Scientific Institute for Quality of Health Care (IQ Healthcare), the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL), and the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos). N.A.G. was partly supported by a personal grant from the Gratama Stichting. The authors do not have any potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BCN Neuroimaging Center, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Nynke A. Groenewold, Remco J. Renken, Esther M. Opmeer & André Aleman

  2. Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE), University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Nynke A. Groenewold, Annelieke M. Roest & Peter de Jonge

  3. Department of Psychiatry, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Dick J. Veltman

  4. Department of Psychiatry and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Nic J. A. van der Wee

  5. University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK

    Catherine J. Harmer

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  1. Nynke A. Groenewold
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  2. Annelieke M. Roest
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Correspondence to Nynke A. Groenewold.

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Groenewold, N.A., Roest, A.M., Renken, R.J. et al. Cognitive vulnerability and implicit emotional processing: imbalance in frontolimbic brain areas?. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 15, 69–79 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0316-5

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