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Abstract: A growing body of work points to the clinical reality of preschool onset depression, a
early onset psychiatric disorder that shares many of the typical features of adolescent and adult
depression, though in a developmentally appropriate form. However, little is know about the
neurobiological changes associated with such preschool onset forms of depression. Adult
depression is associated with both structural and functional changes in a circuit of limbicprefrontal
regions known to be critical for emotion processing and regulation, including the
ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), insular cortex, cingulate cortex, amygdala and
hippocampus. We hypothesized that preschool onset depression would also be associated with
functional and structural changes in at least a subset of these regions, with more severe and
chronic MDD in children being associated with greater impairment in this circuit. To test this
hypothesis, we are examining both the structural and functional integrity of these regions in a
large sample of prospectively followed children (currently ages 8-10) who were identified
between the ages of 3-5 as having either Major Depression (MDD), Anxiety disorders, disruptive
disorders or no psychiatric illness (healthy controls). We used a well-validated facial emotionprocessing
task in which children are shown faces that vary in emotional content (happy, neutral,
sad, angry and fearful) and emotional intensity. We collected BOLD contrast images during
performance of this task, using a Siemen’s 3T Tim TRIO and a 12 channel head coil. The
children with preschool onset MDD showed greater activation than controls for the comparison
of sad to happy faces in pregenual cingulate, VMPFC and left Amygdala. In addition we
correlated dimensional characterizations of depression (assessed over multiple ages for each
child) for depression, anxiety, and disruptive behavior with brain activity in response to
emotional faces, using partial correlations that controlled for variance in the other dimensions.
Greater severity in the depression dimension - even when controlling for anxiety and disruptive
symptom severity - correlated with greater activity to sad faces in the VMPFC and the
amygdala/hippocampal complex. The disruptive dimension showed little correlation with brain
activity to sad faces, and the anxiety dimension primarily showed correlations with lateral
temporal regions for sad faces. These initial data provide the first evidence that preschool onset
depression is associated with functional brain activation alterations in at least some of the same
regions found to show abnormalities in adolescent and adult depression.
Disclosures: A. Belden, None; J. Luby, None; D.M. Barch, None.
Poster
548. Mood Disorders: Human Biomarkers (Imaging, Cellular, and Molecular)
Location: South Hall A
Time: Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 8:00 am - 12:00 noon
Program#/Poster#: 548.6/W24
Topic: C.16.b. Mood disorders: Human biomarkers (imaging, genetics, biochemistry)