They found that when depressed adolescents were shown a series of photos of distressing images depicting scenarios such as someone crying, someone visibly hurt, someone being attacked,
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The activity was mainly reduced in brain areas such as the occipital pole (which processes visual information, found at the rear of the brain) and the fusiform gyrus (which is involved in the processing of faces, body, and colors, found near the brain stem and cerebellum).
This finding reflects a form of “emotional numbness”, where depressed adolescents shut down their emotions and do not feel “involved” in what’s happening around them, or even reflect difficulties with taking another person’s perspective, as the images showed distressing situations that were happening to others.
This effect has not been found in previous work using the same distressing images in adults with depression, which could imply that there are potential vulnerabilities in the brains of depressed adolescents which are not found in the brains of depressed adults.
Later, the 29 depressed adolescents were given either the antidepressant fluoxetine or a placebo. After a single 10mg dose (a normal starting dose) of fluoxetine, brain activity in depressed adolescents was found to increase to the same level as that of healthy adolescents.
This could imply that this medication reduces the brain’s avoidance of experiencing these distressing images in very early treatment.
This effect could help these depressed adolescents approach problems that arise in everyday life, by helping them cope with the distressing experience. However, this is just a working hypothesis and needs to be confirmed in larger studies.
Source: Medindia
