Why the study?
Response inhibition impairment is prevalent in MDD, but the spatiotemporal neural activity underlying it and its relationship with the autonomic nervous system remains unclear.
Abnormal spatiotemporal interactions in gamma oscillations during response inhibition in MDD patients correlate with heart rate variability, suggesting a link between central neural activity and autonomic nervous system imbalance.
Gamma dysconnectivity may link inhibition and HRV deficits in MDD; hypothesis-generating for targeted interventions.
• Patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) exhibit impaired response inhibition and reduced Heart Rate Variability (HRV). • Decreased response inhibition in MDD patients may stem from weakened connections of gamma oscillations between the frontal and occipital lobes and increased connections of gamma oscillations between the frontal and temporal lobes. • The diminished gamma oscillations observed in the frontotemporal lobe during response inhibition could be associated with an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system. Impairment in response inhibition function is highly prevalent in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), yet the spatiotemporal neural activity underlying response inhibition and its relationship with the autonomic nervous system (ANS) remains unclear. 35 MDD participants and 35 healthy controls (HC) were included with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) data collecting during a go/no-go task. Heart rate variability (HRV) indices were calculated from the ECG data. Differences in functional connectivity (FC) of gamma oscillations (60–90 Hz) between 0–200 ms, 200–400 ms, and 400–600 ms in the two groups after no-go stimuli were analyzed, and the correlation between FC and HRV indices was examined. The MDD group exhibited poorer task performance and lower HRV indices than the HC group. During the 200–400 ms period, compared to the HC group, the MDD group exhibited decreased FC between the left inferior frontal gyrus (opercular part) and right temporal pole (middle temporal gyrus) ( t = 3.62, p < 0.05), and increased FC between the right superior frontal gyrus (orbital part) and right superior occipital gyrus ( t = 3.68, p < 0.05). Additionally, a significant positive correlation was found between FC of the left inferior frontal gyrus (opercular part) and right middle temporal gyrus (temporal pole) and the HRV index RMSSD in the MDD group ( r = 0.491, p < 0.05). Abnormal spatiotemporal interactions in gamma oscillations related to response inhibition are observed in MDD patients and abnormal gamma oscillations showed task-dependent covariation with ANS indices, suggesting their potential interplay in MDD pathophysiology.
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Sheng et al. (2025) studied this question.
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