Heart rate variability during motor and cognitive tasks in females with major depressive disorder

Research indicates that major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with alterations in autonomic control, particularly cardiac control as measured by heart rate variability (HRV). In this preliminary study, we investigated the neural correlates of autonomic control by measuring both HRV and associated brain activity during the performance of mildly stressful tasks. Medically healthy female subjects with MDD (N=10) and healthy controls (N=7) underwent H(2)(15)O-positron emission tomography (PET) and electrocardiographic ECG recording while performing a handgrip motor task and an n-back task. Indices of HRV were calculated and correlated with regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). Differences in the rCBF and HRV correlations between depressed and healthy subjects were evident in both the medial and lateral orbital cortices. In addition, these areas appeared to be involved in different facets of autonomic control with regard to sympathetic or parasympathetic dominance of cardiac control. These results are consistent with the known roles of networks within the orbital cortex in both autonomic control and the pathophysiology of MDD.

[1]  J. Thayer,et al.  Heart period variability and depressive symptoms: gender differences , 1998, Biological Psychiatry.

[2]  A. Malliani,et al.  Clinical Exploration of the Autonomic Nervous System by Means of Electrocardiography , 1990, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[3]  V. Vaccarino,et al.  Depressive Symptoms and Heart Rate Variability: Evidence for a Shared Genetic Substrate in a Study of Twins , 2008, Psychosomatic medicine.

[4]  J. Fleiss,et al.  The ability of several short-term measures of RR variability to predict mortality after myocardial infarction. , 1993, Circulation.

[5]  M. Skinner,et al.  Modulation of the vagal bradycardia evoked by stimulation of upper airway receptors by central 5‐HT1 receptors in anaesthetized rabbits , 1998, British journal of pharmacology.

[6]  B. Dubois,et al.  Functions of the left superior frontal gyrus in humans: a lesion study. , 2006, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[7]  Peter Herscovitch,et al.  Serotonin transporter genotype and depressive phenotype determination by discriminant analysis of glucose metabolism under acute tryptophan depletion , 2008, NeuroImage.

[8]  I. Goldstein,et al.  Baroreflex mechanisms in major depression , 2007, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry.

[9]  M. Raichle,et al.  Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders , 1997, Nature.

[10]  G. Chrousos,et al.  Organization of the stress system and its dysregulation in melancholic and atypical depression: high vs low CRH/NE states , 2002, Molecular Psychiatry.

[11]  T. Raju,et al.  Modulation of cardiac autonomic functions in patients with major depression treated with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. , 2007, Journal of affective disorders.

[12]  T. Shinba,et al.  Decrease in heart rate variability response to task is related to anxiety and depressiveness in normal subjects , 2008, Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences.

[13]  A. Loewy,et al.  Central representation of the sympathetic nervous system in the cerebral cortex , 2001, Brain Research.

[14]  Roberto Colombo,et al.  A comprehensive PC solution to heart rate variability analysis in mental stress , 1989, [1989] Proceedings. Computers in Cardiology.

[15]  L. Mulder,et al.  Please Scroll down for Article Ergonomics Cardiovascular and Eye Activity Measures as Indices for Momentary Changes in Mental Effort during Simulated Flight Cardiovascular and Eye Activity Measures as Indices for Momentary Changes in Mental Effort during Simulated Flight , 2022 .

[16]  W. Honer,et al.  Synaptic and plasticity-associated proteins in anterior frontal cortex in severe mental illness , 1999, Neuroscience.

[17]  W. Drevets.  Prefrontal Cortical‐Amygdalar Metabolism in Major Depression , 1999, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[18]  Julian F. Thayer,et al.  The Non-invasive Assessment of Autonomic Influences on the Heart Using Impedance Cardiography and Heart Rate Variability , 2010 .

[19]  D. Adam,et al.  Assessment of autonomic function in humans by heart rate spectral analysis. , 1985, The American journal of physiology.

[20]  A. Ramage,et al.  Modulation of reflexly evoked vagal bradycardias by central 5‐HT1A receptors in anaesthetized rabbits , 2002, British journal of pharmacology.

[21]  Jayashri Kulkarni,et al.  An fMRI study of prefrontal brain activation during multiple tasks in patients with major depressive disorder , 2008, Human brain mapping.

[22]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation , 1996, Human brain mapping.

[23]  Y. Z. Ider,et al.  Model based and experimental investigation of respiratory effect on the HRV power spectrum , 2006, Physiological measurement.

[24]  A. Malliani,et al.  Spectral analysis of cardiovascular variabilities in the assessment of sympathetic cardiac regulation in heart failure. , 1991, Pharmacological research.

[25]  M. Raichle,et al.  Functional anatomical correlates of antidepressant drug treatment assessed using PET measures of regional glucose metabolism , 2002, European Neuropsychopharmacology.

[26]  M. Furey,et al.  Brain structural and functional abnormalities in mood disorders: implications for neurocircuitry models of depression , 2008, Brain Structure and Function.

[27]  A. Beck,et al.  An inventory for measuring depression. , 1961, Archives of general psychiatry.

[28]  J. Price.  Prefrontal Cortical Networks Related to Visceral Function and Mood , 1999, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[29]  J. Thayer,et al.  Estimating respiratory frequency from autoregressive spectral analysis of heart period. , 2002, IEEE engineering in medicine and biology magazine : the quarterly magazine of the Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society.

[30]  R. Kessler,et al.  Sex and depression in the National Comorbidity Survey. I: Lifetime prevalence, chronicity and recurrence. , 1993, Journal of affective disorders.

[31]  Emery N. Brown,et al.  Brain correlates of autonomic modulation: Combining heart rate variability with fMRI , 2008, NeuroImage.

[32]  R. Cohen,et al.  Hemodynamic regulation: investigation by spectral analysis. , 1985, The American journal of physiology.

[33]  M. Åsberg,et al.  A New Depression Scale Designed to be Sensitive to Change , 1979, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[34]  Enrico Simonotto,et al.  Limbic over-activity in depression during preserved performance on the n-back task , 2006, NeuroImage.

[35]  J. Korf,et al.  Neuroanatomy of Cardiac Activity‐regulating Circuitry: A Transneuronal Retrograde Viral Labelling Study in the Rat , 1996, The European journal of neuroscience.

[36]  S. Miyake,et al.  Cardiovascular reactivity to mental stress: relationship with menstrual cycle and gender. , 2004, Journal of physiological anthropology and applied human science.

[37]  Brian Baker,et al.  The influence of age, gender, and race on the prevalence of depression in heart failure patients. , 2004, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[38]  John Suckling,et al.  A Longitudinal Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Verbal Working Memory in Depression After Antidepressant Therapy , 2007, Biological Psychiatry.

[39]  R. J Dolan,et al.  Activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex covaries with sympathetic skin conductance level: a physiological account of a “default mode” of brain function , 2004, NeuroImage.

[40]  J. Talairach,et al.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain: 3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging , 1988 .

[41]  Marcus W. Agelink,et al.  Autonomic neurocardiac function in patients with major depression and effects of antidepressive treatment with nefazodone. , 2001, Journal of affective disorders.

[42]  A. Goodchild,et al.  Impaired serotonergic regulation of heart rate may underlie reduced baroreflex sensitivity in an animal model of depression. , 2008, American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology.

[43]  Friedberg Ck.  Computers in cardiology. , 1970 .

[44]  W. Drevets,et al.  Differential effects of 5-HTTLPR genotypes on the behavioral and neural responses to tryptophan depletion in patients with major depression and controls. , 2006, Archives of general psychiatry.

[45]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Sustained Activity in the Medial Wall during Working Memory Delays , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[46]  A. Malliani,et al.  Physiology and clinical implications of variability of cardiovascular parameters with focus on heart rate and blood pressure. , 1994, The American journal of cardiology.

[47]  J. Price,et al.  The organization of networks within the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of rats, monkeys and humans. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[48]  Hugo D. Critchley,et al.  Following One's Heart: Cardiac Rhythms Gate Central Initiation of Sympathetic Reflexes , 2009, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[49]  T. Shallice,et al.  Human cingulate cortex and autonomic control: converging neuroimaging and clinical evidence. , 2003, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[50]  Gregor Hasler,et al.  Neural response to catecholamine depletion in unmedicated subjects with major depressive disorder in remission and healthy subjects. , 2008, Archives of general psychiatry.

[51]  J. Price,et al.  Architectonic subdivision of the human orbital and medial prefrontal cortex , 2003, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[52]  S. Matthews,et al.  Depressive Symptoms Are Associated With Increased Systemic Vascular Resistance to Stress , 2005, Psychosomatic medicine.

[53]  M. Raichle,et al.  A functional anatomical study of unipolar depression , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[54]  Kewei Chen,et al.  Neural correlates of heart rate variability during emotion , 2009, NeuroImage.

[55]  I. Wiklund,et al.  Subjective symptoms and well-being differ in women and men after myocardial infarction. , 1993, European heart journal.

[56]  Cavit Boz,et al.  Relationship between major depression and heart rate variability. Clinical consequences and implications for antidepressive treatment , 2002, Psychiatry Research.

[57]  Richard Levy,et al.  Cognitive control and brain resources in major depression: An fMRI study using the n-back task , 2005, NeuroImage.

[58]  K. Bär,et al.  Gastric dysmotility in patients with major depression. , 2008, Journal of affective disorders.

[59]  J L Lancaster,et al.  Prefrontal hyperactivation during working memory task in untreated individuals with major depressive disorder , 2007, Molecular Psychiatry.

[60]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Combining Spatial Extent and Peak Intensity to Test for Activations in Functional Imaging , 1997, NeuroImage.

[61]  L. Luecken,et al.  Handbook of Physiological Research Methods in Health Psychology , 2007 .

[62]  W. Drevets,et al.  Orbitofrontal Cortex Function and Structure in Depression , 2007, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[63]  John J. B. Allen,et al.  Sex differences in cardiac vagal control in a depressed sample: Implications for differential cardiovascular mortality , 2007, Biological Psychology.