Project Summary

Dean Sabatinelli, Ph.D (Young Investigator 2007) of the University of Florida, wants to clarify current conceptualizations of depression and advance our understanding of the origin and neural dynamics of depressive etiology. Recent functional imaging studies of depressed patients performing emotional tasks have identified reduced activity in the medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex, coupled with enhanced limbic subcortical activation during emotion-relevant tasks, relative to controls. It has been proposed that this network imbalance may be linked with cognitive and mood disturbances underlying depressive symptomology. Dr. Sabatinelli therefore proposes to employ rapid functional imaging techniques to identify potential dysfunctions in hierarchical functional coupling between the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum (NAcc) associated with appetitive stimulus processing in depressed individuals relative to controls.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Unipolar

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