Probing Prefrontal Cortex Hemodynamic Alterations for Major Depression Disorder (MDD)

July 11, 2018 updated by: Xijing Hospital

Probing Prefrontal Cortex Hemodynamic Alterations During Facial Emotion Recognition for Major Depression Disorder Through Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy

Major depression disorder (MDD) has high estimated lifetime prevalence rates of 16.6%. Currently, the diagnosis for the MDD mainly depends on patients' reports of symptoms, observed behaviors and disease course. Establishment of clinically useful biomarkers for the MDD diagnosis would enhance patient management and treatment effect, and lead to the therapies adjusted to the individual. However, no such biomarkers have been established up to now. Therefore, the development of objective and feasible biomarkers is of special significance and a great challenge for accurate and early diagnosis and treatment of depression, in order to overcome the limitations of relying on clinical interviews alone.The ability to correctly recognize emotional states from faces is instrumental for interpersonal engagement and social functioning. Impairments processing of facial emotional expressions and biased facial emotion detection are frequently found in the MDD patients. To date, the studies on neural mechanism of the facial emotion recognition of the MDD patients were mainly based on the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has not been applied for the facial emotion recognition for the depression patients up to now. To bridge the important gap in the literature, we used the fNIRS methodology to investigate the neural mechanisms of facial emotion recognition for the patients with depression. We hypothesize the physiological feature of the hemodynamic responses in prefrontal cortex measured by fNIRS under the task of face emotion recognition, including the difference of the median, the Mayer wave power, the mean cross wavelet coefficient, and the mean wavelet coherence coefficient, combined with the behavior measurement (behavior accuracy and response time), could provide a reliable and feasible diagnosis approach to differentiate patients with the MDD from healthy control (HC) subjects with acceptable sensitivity and specificity.

Study Overview

Status

Unknown

Conditions

Detailed Description

The fMRI technique for functional imaging were limited by the fact that the individuals need to be placed in an uncomfortable or unnatural setting and foreign, noisy, dark, or claustrophobic environment (e.g., lying in a supine position in a narrow gantry with the head restrained during the entire examination), for accurate measurement during the procedure, with relatively lower temporal resolution. In contrast, a multi-channel fNIRS machine provides a completely non-invasive, quiet and mobile measurement of brain function in ordinary clinical settings and allows patients to be comfortably seated in a normal posture in a well-lit room, with higher temporal resolution making it possible to obtain a recording of the actual time course of a hemodynamic epoch in response to a specific cognitive task (e.g., facial emotion recognition task in our study) in a single trial. Additionally, due to the small operating and maintenance costs associated with NIRS, it is possible to run fNIRS study with a large sample of participants.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Anticipated)

200

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • China
    • Shaanxi
      • Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, 710032
        • Department of psychiatry, Xijing Hospital; Research Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 35 years (Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

This study was performed in Xijing Hospital and Xi'an Jiaotong University in China. 100 right-handed subjects meeting DSM-IV criteria for major depression were recruited by advertisement to participate in the study, and were matched with a control group of 100 comparison subjects of university staff members, university students and members of the general population.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • MDD group:

All subjects were free of psychotropic medication for a minimum of 4 weeks; Psychiatric diagnosis was determined by DSM-IV criteria; Depressed subjects were included with 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) scores ≥ 18; Mini-mental State Examination(MMSE) ≥ 24; All subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

  • HC group:

All subjects were free of psychotropic medication for a minimum of 4 weeks; All subjects did not have any mental, neurological or physical diseases；HRSD scores ≤ 7; MMSE ≥ 28; All subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Exclusion criteria were any history of neurologic trauma resulting in loss of consciousness, any current neurologic disorder, any lifetime psychiatric disorder other than major depression in the MDD subjects, or any lifetime psychiatric disorder in control subjects. Careful attention was paid to excluding substance abuse disorders.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Observational Models: Case-Control
  • Time Perspectives: Prospective

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort
MDD group
The major depression group (MDD group) received antidepressant treatment but did not interfere with drug selection.
HC group
The healthy control group (HC group) don't accept intervention and treatment.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Hamilton Depression Scale-17(HAMD-17) score alterations
Time Frame: Change from baseline HAMD-17 scores at 6 months
The HAMD-17 scores are to evaluate the severity degree of depression, and the HAMD-17 scores reduction rate is used to evaluate the clinical treatment effect. If the reduction rate exceeds 50%, it indicates that the clinical treatment is effective.
Change from baseline HAMD-17 scores at 6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
facial emotion recognition
Time Frame: Difference at facial emotion recognition between day 1 and month 6.
The ability to correctly recognize emotional states from faces is instrumental for interpersonal engagement and social functioning. Impairments processing of facial emotional expressions and biased facial emotion detection are frequently found in the MDD patients. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has not been applied for the facial emotion recognition for the depression patients up to now.
Difference at facial emotion recognition between day 1 and month 6.
Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index（PSQI）
Time Frame: Difference at PSQI between day 1, month 3 and month 6.
PSQI was used to assess the quality of sleep for subjects in the recent month. The total score ranges from 0 to 21 points. The higher the score, the worse the sleep quality.
Difference at PSQI between day 1, month 3 and month 6.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Xijing Hospital

Collaborators

Health Science Center of Xi'an Jiaotong University

Investigators

  • Study Chair: Huaning Wang, doctorate, Department of psychiatry, Xijing Hospital

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

February 16, 2017

Primary Completion (Anticipated)

August 31, 2018

Study Completion (Anticipated)

December 31, 2018

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 24, 2018

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 11, 2018

First Posted (Actual)

July 23, 2018

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

July 23, 2018

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 11, 2018

Last Verified

February 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • KY20172012-1

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

Undecided

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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