Impairment in processing visual information at the pre-attentive stage in patients with a major depressive disorder: a visual mismatch negativity study

Neurosci Lett. 2011 Mar 10;491(1):53-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.01.006. Epub 2011 Jan 6.

Abstract

We compared the pre-attentive processing in patients with a major depressive disorder (MDD) and matched healthy controls as indexed by the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) elicited by exposure duration of visual stimuli randomly presented on both peripheral visual fields. To obtain the memory-comparison-based visual MMN, the role of standard and deviant stimuli was reversed in separate blocks. Compared with healthy participants, MDD patients exhibited decreased MMN amplitudes of long duration deviant only and this deficit was not correlated with the depression severity. These data suggests functional impairment of pre-attentive basic visual information processing in MDD patients.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Attention / physiology*
  • Cognition Disorders / diagnosis
  • Cognition Disorders / etiology
  • Cognition Disorders / physiopathology*
  • Depressive Disorder, Major / complications
  • Depressive Disorder, Major / physiopathology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Perceptual Disorders / diagnosis
  • Perceptual Disorders / etiology
  • Perceptual Disorders / physiopathology*
  • Unconscious, Psychology*
  • Visual Perception / physiology*
  • Young Adult