Why the study?
Are alterations in frontal hemoglobin oxygenation during cognitive and respiratory tasks different between elderly depressed patients and controls?
Are alterations in frontal hemoglobin oxygenation during cognitive and respiratory tasks different between elderly depressed patients and controls?
Functional hypofrontality in elderly depression is likely not due to an altered vasodilator response, as hyperventilation induced similar hemodynamic changes in both patients and controls.
Hypothesis-generating for task-specific hypofrontality in elderly depression unrelated to vasodilation; leaves open mechanisms and NIRS utility pending prospective data.
In an attempt to elucidate the neurobiological basis of hypofrontality in depression, alterations of oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin were examined by using near-infrared spectroscopy of the left frontal region in 9 elderly patients with depressive disorders and 10 control subjects. Verbal repetition task, verbal fluency test, hyperventilation, and paper-bag breathing were performed. During the verbal fluency test, oxyhemoglobin significantly increased and deoxyhemoglobin significantly decreased in control subjects, whereas no significant change was observed in patients. During hyperventilation, oxyhemoglobin significantly decreased and deoxyhemoglobin significantly increased in both groups. These findings suggest that functional hypofrontality in elderly depression is not due to altered vasodilator response.
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Matsuo et al. (2000) studied this question.
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