(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, PA, July 30, 2015 - Depressed people often find themselves preoccupied with guilty, shameful, or self-defeating thoughts for large parts of their day. These thoughts not only distract from other activities but also fail to resolve the underlying life issues. Further, the ideas that receive focused attention in these depressive ruminations are frequently quite distorted and lead to distress.
The way that depressed people repetitively attend to these negative thoughts in an unproductive manner reflects the reasoning behind use of the term ruminations - because they call to mind the repetitive chewing of cud by ruminants like cows or goats.
The propensity for rumination in depression has been well characterized. However, a new study by Dr. J. Paul Hamilton at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research and his colleagues at Stanford University sheds light on the brain mechanisms giving rise to these symptoms.
Their work highlights the interplay of a brain region implicated in depression, the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC) and a brain network involved in reflection, sometimes called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN becomes activated when the brain's task-oriented circuits are not engaged, i.e., during times of self-referential thought.
By reanalyzing existing studies, Hamilton and colleagues show that depressive ruminations are more likely to emerge in depression when the firing of the sgPFC, signaling depressed mood, is more tightly coordinated with the firing of the DMN. They propose that the observed increased connectivity reflects a functional integration of sgPFC and DMN processes which, in turn, support rumination in depression.
"This study shows that depression distorts a natural process. It would seem that normally the subgenual prefrontal cortex helps to bias the reflective process supported by the default mode network so that we can consider important problems in the service of developing strategies for solving them," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.
"However, in depression it seems that the subgenual prefrontal cortex runs amok hijacking normal self-reflection in a maladaptive way. This may be one reason that electrical stimulation of the sgPFC is helpful for some patients with severe or treatment-resistant symptoms of depression."
INFORMATION:
The article is "Depressive Rumination, the Default-Mode Network, and the Dark Matter of Clinical Neuroscience" by J. Paul Hamilton, Madison Farmer, Phoebe Fogelman, and Ian H. Gotlib (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.02.020). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 78, Issue 4 (August 15, 2015), published by Elsevier.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322315001432
Notes for editors
Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact J. Paul Hamilton at +1 650 387 7976 or paul.hamilton@laureateinstitute.org.
The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.
John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Chief of Psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.
About Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.
The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.
Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 6th out of 140 Psychiatry titles and 10th out of 252 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports® published by Thomson Reuters. The 2014 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 10.255.
http://www.sobp.org/journal
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions -- among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey -- and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com
Anyone who has ever watched a group of ants scurrying to carry a large crumb back to their nest has probably wondered how these tiny creatures manage the task. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, which appeared today in Nature Communications, explains how a balance of individual direction and conformist behavior enables ants to work together to move their food to in the desired direction.
To lug a large object, a number of ants surround it - the back ones lift, those on the leading edge pull. How do they stay on track, instead of simply pulling all around ...
That is the conclusion of a major new review, written by leading world experts and published in the medical journal, Addiction. The review examined a wide range of measures that healthcare systems in different countries can adopt to help smokers to stop. It reviewed how effective they are and how much they cost, and offers a new tool to help governments and healthcare administrators calculate the cost - and affordability1 - of stop smoking treatments.
The main findings of the review were:
"Cytisine", a medicine currently only found in a few mostly Eastern European ...
New research by scientists at the University of York has given tea and coffee drinkers new information about why their favourite drinks taste as they do.
The study led by Dr Seishi Shimizu, of the York Structural Biology Laboratory in the University's Department of Chemistry, shows that sugar has an important effect in reducing the bitterness of tea and coffee, not just by masking it but by influencing the fundamental chemistry.
The research published in Food and Function reveals new insights into the way in which caffeine, sugar and water interact at the molecular ...
New research in the Open Access journal GigaScience presents a virtual package of data for biogas production, made reusable in a containerized form to allow scientists to better understand the production of biofuels.
One of the promising areas in biofuels development is biogas, which has huge potential as a renewable and clean source of energy. Biogas is the production of methane gas through the anaerobic digestion (fermentation) of organic matter such as agricultural or food waste. Detailed knowledge on the functioning of the fermentation process is key for optimizing ...
A new blood test could help emergency room doctors quickly diagnose traumatic brain injury and determine its severity. The findings, published July 10 in the Journal of Neurotrauma, could help identify patients who might benefit from extra therapy or experimental treatments.
"Compared to other proteins that have been measured in traumatic brain injury, BDNF does a much better job of predicting outcomes," says Frederick Korley, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and first author of the new paper.
After ...
Philadelphia, July 30, 2015 - In a new national survey of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, Health Union reveals a surprising lack of awareness of risk factors and knowledge of diagnosis stage among patients. Results demonstrate a severe impact on quality of life, employment, and ability to afford treatment.
COPD, the third most common cause of death in the United States, describes a group of lung conditions that severely impact the breathing of nearly 15 million people in the U.S. (or six percent of the population) and more than 65 million worldwide. ...
WASHINGTON, DC, July 28, 2015 -- Recent research has shown that racial segregation in the U.S. is declining between neighborhoods, but a new study indicates that segregation is manifesting itself in other ways -- not disappearing.
"We just can't get too excited by recent declines in neighborhood segregation," said lead author Daniel Lichter, the Ferris Family Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management and a professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. "The truth is neighborhood segregation still remains high in America, and our study ...
This news release is available in French. By blocking the expression of a certain gene in patients, University of Montreal researchers have contributed to the demonstration of great decreases in the concentration of triglycerides in their blood, even in various severe forms of hypertriglyceridemia and regardless of the base values or the treatment the patient usually receives. The gene in question codes for the apoC-III protein. "Our study suggests that the proteine apoC-III plays a key role in the management of triglycerides. Triglycerides, like cholesterol, are lipids. ...
URBANA, Ill. - With many types of cancers, early detection offers the best hope for survival. However, research into new early-detection screenings, as well as possible interventional radiology and surgical treatments, has been hindered by the lack of a large animal model that would accurately reflect the types of cancers seen in human cells.
For the last several years, researchers at the University of Illinois interested in improving screening programs for cancer have studied gene expression in mice, humans, and pigs in an effort to create a large-animal model that ...
Support for eliminating existing exemptions, except for medical reasons, from immunization laws was among the policy recommendations adopted last weekend at the summer meeting of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians (ACP).
"Allowing exemptions based on non-medical reasons poses a risk both to the unvaccinated person and to public health," said Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, president of ACP,
"Intentionally unvaccinated individuals can pose a danger to the public, especially to individuals who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons."
The ...