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Scientists make progress on causes of depression

25/08/2008

Scientists have made further progress in understanding the reasons why some people are more prone to depression than others.

Research at the University of Manchester, the National Institutes of neurological Disorders and Stroke in the US, and the LABS-D'Or Centre for Neuroscience in Brazil identified how the brain links knowledge about social behaviour with moral sentiments, such as pride and guilt.

The scientists used magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 29 healthy individuals while they considered certain social behaviours.

The findings showed how regions of the brain interact to link knowledge about socially appropriate behaviour with different moral feelings, depending on the context in which the social behaviour occurs.

"During everyday life we constantly evaluate social behaviour and this largely affects how we feel about ourselves and other people," said Dr Roland Zahn, of Manchester University.

"But the way we store and use information about our own and other people's social behaviour are not well understood.

"This latest study used functional brain imaging to identify the circuits in the brain that underpin our ability to differentiate social behaviour that conforms to our values from behaviour that does not."

The scientists found that social behaviour which did not confirm to an individual's values lead to anger when carried out by another person or guilt when the behaviour was their own.

"The most distinctive feature of depressive disorders is an exaggerated negative attitude to oneself, which is typically accompanied by feelings of guilt," Dr Zahn added.

"Now that we understand how the brains of healthy individuals respond to feelings of guilt, we hope to be able to better understand why and where there are differences in brain activity in people suffering from, or prone to, depression.

"The brain region we have identified to be associated with proneness to guilt has been shown to be abnormally active in patients with severe depression in several previous studies, but until now its involvement in guilt had been unknown.

"The results will hopefully make an important contribution to our understanding of the causes of depression that will ultimately allow new approaches to find better treatments and prevention."