Sustained gamma-band EEG following negative words in depression and schizophrenia.

INTRODUCTION Sustained and elaborative emotional information processing in depression and decreased affective elaboration in schizophrenia are considered hallmarks of these disorders but have not been directly measured. Gamma-band (35-45 Hz) EEG has been associated with semantic functions such as feature binding and may index these elaborative processing. This study examined whether there were group differences in baseline and sustained gamma-band EEG following emotional stimuli in healthy adults as well as adults with depression and schizophrenia. METHODS 24 never-depressed healthy controls, 14 patients with DSM-IV unipolar major depressive disorder, and 15 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia completed a lexical emotion identification task during EEG assessment. Gamma-band (35-45 Hz) EEG in response to negative words was the primary dependent measure. RESULTS As predicted, depressed individuals displayed sustained and increased gamma-band EEG throughout the task, and particularly in the seconds following negative words. Individuals with schizophrenia displayed decreased gamma-band activity throughout the task. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that gamma-band EEG, measured over several seconds, may serve as a useful index of sustained semantic information processing. Depressed individuals appear to engage in sustained elaboration following emotional stimuli, whereas individuals with schizophrenia are not as prone to this type of elaborative processing.

[1]  M. First,et al.  Structured clinical interview for DSM-IV axis I disorders : SCID-I : clinical version : scoresheet , 1997 .

[2]  Ichiro Shimoyama,et al.  Event-related dynamics of the gamma-band oscillation in the human brain: information processing during a GO/NOGO hand movement task , 1999, Neuroscience Research.

[3]  M. Hasselmo,et al.  Gamma frequency-range abnormalities to auditory stimulation in schizophrenia. , 1999, Archives of general psychiatry.

[4]  Cameron S. Carter,et al.  Do the Seconds Turn Into Hours? Relationships between Sustained Pupil Dilation in Response to Emotional Information and Self-Reported Rumination , 2003, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[5]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Automatic activation of the semantic network in schizophrenia: evidence from event-related brain potentials , 2003, Biological Psychiatry.

[6]  B. Feige,et al.  High-frequency cortical responses reflect lexical processing: an MEG study. , 1996, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[7]  Scott E. Maxwell,et al.  Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data: A Model Comparison Perspective , 1990 .

[8]  V. Calhoun,et al.  Neural hybrid model of semantic object memory: Implications from event-related timing using fMRI , 2003, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[9]  P. Deldin,et al.  A slow wave investigation of working memory biases in mood disorders. , 2001, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[10]  A. Cohen,et al.  Affective reactivity of language symptoms, startle responding, and inhibition in schizophrenia. , 2001, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[11]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  Methods for Dealing With Reaction Time Outliers , 1992 .

[12]  R. Lesser,et al.  Functional mapping of human sensorimotor cortex with electrocorticographic spectral analysis. I. Alpha and beta event-related desynchronization. , 1998, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[13]  J. Teasdale.  Cognitive Vulnerability to Persistent Depression , 1988 .

[14]  J. Ford,et al.  Reduced communication between frontal and temporal lobes during talking in schizophrenia , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[15]  A. Cohen,et al.  Affective reactivity of speech and emotional experience in patients with schizophrenia , 2004, Schizophrenia Research.

[16]  R. Lesser,et al.  Functional mapping of human sensorimotor cortex with electrocorticographic spectral analysis. II. Event-related synchronization in the gamma band. , 1998, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[17]  Hillary C. M. Nelson.  The National Adult Reading Test , 1982 .

[18]  Eric Granholm,et al.  Pupillary and reaction time measures of sustained processing of negative information in depression , 2001, Biological Psychiatry.

[19]  D. Senkowski,et al.  Reduced oscillatory gamma-band responses in unmedicated schizophrenic patients indicate impaired frontal network processing , 2004, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[20]  Z. Segal,et al.  Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression , 1998, Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy.

[21]  I. Miller,et al.  Characteristics of depressed patients with elevated levels of dysfunctional cognitions , 1988, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[22]  John O. Willis,et al.  Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Third Edition , 2008 .

[23]  C. Vázquez,et al.  Mood-congruent recall of affectively toned stimuli: A meta-analytic review , 1992 .

[24]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Resting anterior cingulate activity and abnormal responses to errors in subjects with elevated depressive symptoms: A 128‐channel EEG study , 2006, Human brain mapping.

[25]  Paul R. Martin.  Handbook of behavior therapy and psychological science : an integrative approach , 1991 .

[26]  N. Docherty,et al.  Affective reactivity of speech in schizophrenia patients and their nonschizophrenic relatives. , 1998, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[27]  R. Behrendt.  Hallucinations: Synchronisation of thalamocortical γ oscillations underconstrained by sensory input , 2003, Consciousness and Cognition.

[28]  M. Thase,et al.  Can’t shake that feeling: event-related fMRI assessment of sustained amygdala activity in response to emotional information in depressed individuals , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[29]  O. Bertrand,et al.  Relationship between task‐related gamma oscillations and BOLD signal: New insights from combined fMRI and intracranial EEG , 2007, Human brain mapping.

[30]  M. Thase,et al.  Pupillary assessment and computational modeling of the Stroop task in depression. , 2004, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[31]  E. Gordon,et al.  "Gamma synchrony" in first-episode schizophrenia: a disorder of temporal connectivity? , 2005, The American journal of psychiatry.

[32]  G. Matthews,et al.  Depression and the processing of emotional stimuli: A study of semantic priming , 1991, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[33]  A John Rush,et al.  High Frequency EEG Activity during Sleep: Characteristics in Schizophrenia and Depression , 2005, Clinical EEG and neuroscience.

[34]  R. Ingram,et al.  Toward an information-processing analysis of depression , 1984, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[35]  J. D. McGaugh,et al.  Amygdala norepinephrine levels after training predict inhibitory avoidance retention performance in rats , 2002, The European journal of neuroscience.

[36]  R. Ingram.  Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: review and a conceptual model. , 1990, Psychological bulletin.

[37]  F Pulvermüller,et al.  Nouns and verbs in the intact brain: evidence from event-related potentials and high-frequency cortical responses. , 1999, Cerebral cortex.

[38]  S. Lyubomirsky,et al.  Effects of ruminative and distracting responses to depressed mood on retrieval of autobiographical memories. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[39]  E Donchin,et al.  A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. , 1983, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[40]  J. E. Skinner,et al.  The role of the thalamic reticular neurons in alpha- and gamma-oscillations in neocortex: a mechanism for selective perception and stimulus binding. , 2000, Acta neurobiologiae experimentalis.

[41]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  Response styles and the duration of episodes of depressed mood. , 1993, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[42]  S Braeutigam,et al.  Phase-locked gamma band responses to semantic violation stimuli. , 2001, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[43]  R. McCarley,et al.  Neural synchrony indexes disordered perception and cognition in schizophrenia. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[44]  Samuel R. Friedman,et al.  Depression: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Aspects , 1968 .

[45]  P. Hagoort,et al.  EEG theta and gamma responses to semantic violations in online sentence processing , 2006, Brain and Language.

[46]  G. Bower.  Mood and memory. , 1981, The American psychologist.

[47]  R. Stern,et al.  Constricted expressiveness and psychophysiological reactivity in schizophrenia. , 1996, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[48]  Michael E Hasselmo,et al.  Using connectionist models to guide assessment of psychological disorder. , 2002, Psychological assessment.

[49]  S. Rauch,et al.  A functional MRI study of human amygdala responses to facial expressions of fear versus anger. , 2001, Emotion.

[50]  O. Bertrand,et al.  Oscillatory gamma activity in humans and its role in object representation , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[51]  N Birbaumer,et al.  Spectral responses in the gamma-band: physiological signs of higher cognitive processes? , 1995, Neuroreport.

[52]  M. Thase,et al.  Use of FMRI to predict recovery from unipolar depression with cognitive behavior therapy. , 2006, The American journal of psychiatry.

[53]  Christoph Stippich,et al.  Impairment in basal limbic function in schizophrenia during affect recognition , 2003, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

[54]  M. Thase,et al.  Increased Amygdala and Decreased Dorsolateral Prefrontal BOLD Responses in Unipolar Depression: Related and Independent Features , 2007, Biological Psychiatry.