Depressed people less prone to hating others, new EU-funded study finds
A new EU-funded study has shown that people prone to depression are less likely to show feelings of hate as the condition affects part of the brain that controls the emotion. Writing in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, the team of researchers from China and the United Kingdom explain how in depression sufferers the brain frequently de-connects its 'hate circuit', meaning that it simply doesn't join up the right dots for the hate response to occur. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to chart brain activity in depressed and non-depressed people, the team found significant differences in brain circuitry between the two groups. Thirty-nine depressed people - 23 women and 16 men - and 37 control subjects who were not depressed - 14 women and 23 men - were analysed in the study, which received a boost of funding under the BION ('Synthetic pathways to bio-inspired information processing') project which is funded in part by EUR 1.3 million under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). One of the study authors from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science, Professor Jianfeng Feng, says: 'The results are clear but at first sight are puzzling as we know that depression is often characterised by intense self loathing and there is no obvious indication that depressives are less prone to hate others. One possibility is that the uncoupling of this hate circuit could be associated with impaired ability to control and learn from social or other situations which provoke feelings of hate towards self or others. This in turn could lead to an inability to deal appropriately with feelings of hate and an increased likelihood of both uncontrolled self-loathing and withdrawal from social interactions. It may be that this is a neurological indication that it is more normal to have occasion to hate others rather than hate ourselves.' It was in 2008 that the hate circuit was first defined and clearly identified, when Professor Semir Zeki from University College London found that a circuit connected three regions in the brain - the superior frontal gyrus, insula and putamen - when test subjects were shown pictures of people they hated. In 92% of this new study's depressed test subjects this hate circuit was likely to have become broken. Those depressed people also seemed to have experienced other significant disruptions to brain circuits associated with risk and action, reward and emotion, and attention and memory processing. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) depression affects 121 million people worldwide and is one of the leading causes of disability in the world. Fewer than 25% of those affected have access to effective treatments. The WHO describes the condition as a common mental disorder characterised by depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy and poor concentration. These problems can become chronic or recurrent and lead to substantial impairments in an individual's ability to take care of his or her everyday responsibilities. At its worst, depression can lead to suicide, a tragic fatality associated with the loss of about 850,000 lives every year. The aims of the BION project are to use data from neuroanatomy and neurophysiology as a guide for the fabrication of deterministic and complex self-assembled networks of polymeric non-linear elements with adaptive properties. The main objective is the realisation of a new technology for the production of functional molecular assemblies, which can perform advanced tasks involving learning and decision making, and which can be tailored down to the nanoscale.For more information, please visit:The University of Warwick:http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/
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