Reward System Functioning in Depression, an fMRI study

Brain region activations were measured in patients with depression and healthy control participants concerning selection of reward, reward anticipation, and feedback (Smoski, Felder, Bizzell, Green, Ernst, Lynch et al., 2009). More concrete, it was measured if patients with depression hyporesponsivity in the striatal brain areas and hyperresponsivity in the cortical brain areas while performing the wheel of fortune conflict monitoring task. As compared to healthy control subjects, the patients with depression displayed lower activation in the caudate, a region that has been associated with reward prediction. It is concluded by the authors that this is support for the hypothesized hyporesponsivity in the mesolimbic reward system. There was no support found for the hypothesis of altered conflict monitoring Because the patients displayed diminished activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex while they were anticipating reward. This region is associated with conflict monitoring (Smoski et al., 2009).