Project Summary

Heather C. Abercrombie, Ph.D. (Young Investigator 2004) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, aims to use fMRI to study the effects of the stress hormone cortisol on emotion and memory in depressed individuals compared with healthy controls. Some depressed individuals show elevated cortisol levels or cortisol regulation problems, and some evidence suggests cortisol differentially affects depressed people vs. healthy controls. Cortisol has effects on memory but its role in depression on memory bias--or the preferential forgetting of positive information and the remembrance of the negative--has not been studied. In the proposed project, Dr. Abercrombie will compare fMRI images of 20 depressed individuals with 20 never-depressed people as they look at emotional and neutral pictures and are randomly given either hydrocortisone, or cortisol, or placebo. Memory for the pictures viewed during the scans will be assayed as will hydrocortisone’s effects on mood. Data analyses will measure differences between depressed and non-depressed individuals in the effects of cortisol on brain activation associated with cortisol-related changes in mood and processing of emotional pictures.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Unipolar Depression

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