Association of acute depressive symptoms and functional connectivity in emotional processing regions following sport-related concussion
Year: 2018
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Few studies have examined the physiologic correlates of depressive symptoms following sport-related concussion (SRC), despite the prevalence of these symptoms following brain injury. We hypothesized that concussed athletes would have disrupted resting-state functional connectivity in emotional processing regions compared to controls, and that this disruption would be associated with greater post-concussion symptoms of depression. Forty-three concussed athletes at approximately 1 day (N = 34), 1 week (N = 34), and 1 month (N = 30) post-concussion were evaluated along with 51 healthy athletes assessed at a single visit. Resting-state fMRI was collected on a 3T GE scanner (TR = 2s); depressive symptoms were assessed using the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). Emotional processing regions of interest (ROI) were defined using an automated meta-analysis of brain regions associated with the term “emotion”. Fisher-Z transformed correlations were calculated between each ROI. A multivariate approach assessed connectivity by analyzing ROI as simultaneous response variables. Concussed athletes had significantly higher depressive symptoms relative to controls at all time points but showed partial recovery by 1-month post-concussion relative to earlier visits (p9s< 0.05). Functional connectivity did not differ between controls and concussed athletes at 1 day or one-week post-concussion. However, concussed athletes had significantly different connectivity in regions associated with emotional processing at 1 month relative to 1 day post-concussion (p = 0.002), and relative to controls (p = 0.003). Follow-up analyses showed that increased connectivity between attention and default mode networks at 1-month post-concussion was common across both analyses. In addition, functional connectivity of emotional processing regions was significantly associated with depressive symptoms at 1 day (p = 0.003) and one-week post-concussion (p = 7 × 10-8), with greater HAM-D scores correlating with decreased connectivity between attention and default mode networks. These results suggest that intrinsic connectivity between default mode and attention regions following SRC may be compensatory in nature.
Source: Neurology
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2902567568