A potential role for sensory neuroplasticity in major depressive disorder.pdf

Brain imaging and electrophysiological
recordings of primary and secondary sensory cortices indicate that each is arranged
into sub-regions that process specific subsets of environmental stimuli. The sizes of these regions, termed cortical response
fields (CRFs), have been correlated with the consciously perceived intensity of
their respective stimuli and with the neural processing power devoted to
analyzing such stimuli. Typically, CRFs are highly plastic, and their
experience-dependent plasticity is modulated by attention and reinforcement.
Because of this, disorders with negative attentional bias, such as major
depressive disorder (MDD), have the potential to significantly alter these maps
in psychologically harmful ways. We review literature suggesting that sensory
map plasticity plays a role in the initiation and maintenance of major
depressive disorder. Such a role would suggest possible new treatments for MDD,
and may help explain mechanisms of existing treatments.

初级和次级感觉皮层的脑成像与电生理记录表明，二者均被划分为多个亚区域，各自处理环境刺激的特定子集。这些被称为皮层反应野（cortical response fields, CRFs）的区域的大小，与其对应刺激的有意识感知强度，以及用于分析此类刺激的神经处理能力存在相关性。通常而言，皮层反应野具有高度可塑性，其经验依赖性可塑性受到注意力与强化机制的调控。正因如此，伴随负性注意偏向的精神障碍——如重性抑郁障碍（major depressive disorder, MDD）——有可能以对心理有害的方式显著改变此类感觉映射。我们综述了相关文献，这些文献表明感觉映射可塑性在重性抑郁障碍的起始与维持过程中发挥作用。这一作用可为MDD提供潜在的新型治疗方案，也有助于解释现有治疗手段的作用机制。