http://www.nitrc.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7903 <table border="0" width="100%"><tr><td align="left"/></tr></table> <p><b>Is negative self-referent bias an endophenotype for depression? An fMRI study of emotional self-referent words in twins at high vs. low risk of depression.</b></p> <p>J Affect Disord. 2017 Oct 03;226:267-273</p> <p>Authors: Miskowiak KW, Larsen JE, Harmer CJ, Siebner HR, Kessing LV, Macoveanu J, Vinberg M</p> <p>Abstract<br/> BACKGROUND: Negative cognitive bias and aberrant neural processing of self-referent emotional words seem to be trait-marks of depression. However, it is unclear whether these neurocognitive changes are present in unaffected first-degree relatives and constitute an illness endophenotype.<br/> METHODS: Fifty-three healthy, never-depressed monozygotic or dizygotic twins with a co-twin history of depression (high-risk group: n = 26) or no first-degree family history of depression (low-risk group: n = 27) underwent neurocognitive testing and functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) as part of a follow-up cohort study. Participants performed a self-referent emotional word categorisation task and free word recall task followed by a recognition task during fMRI. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing mood, personality traits and coping strategies.<br/> RESULTS: High-risk and low-risk twins (age, mean ± SD: 40 ± 11) were well-balanced for demographic variables, mood, coping and neuroticism. High-risk twins showed lower accuracy during self-referent categorisation of emotional words independent of valence and more false recollections of negative words than low-risk twins during free recall. Functional MRI yielded no differences between high-risk and low-risk twins in retrieval-specific neural activity for positive or negative words or during the recognition of negative versus positive words within the hippocampus or prefrontal cortex.<br/> CONCLUSIONS: The subtle display of negative recall bias is consistent with the hypothesis that self-referent negative memory bias is an endophenotype for depression. High-risk twins' lower categorisation accuracy adds to the evidence for valence-independent cognitive deficits in individuals at familial risk for depression.<br/> </p><p>PMID: 29020651 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]</p> en-us Copyright 2000-2026 NITRC OSI Sat, 02 May 2026 16:54:04 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NITRC RSS generator