Attenuated attention engagement and sensorimotor resonance to social events in first-episode adolescent depression: Evidence from EEG oscillations.

BACKGROUND

Depressive symptoms may disrupt social brain development during adolescence, resulting in adverse long-term quality of life. Yet, little is known regarding the cognitive and neural changes during the processing of social interactions in adolescents with first-episode depression, particularly from an allocentric perspective.

METHODS

We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess two neural indicators during the observation of others' interactions, including sensorimotor mu suppression and occipital alpha-band activity, in 22 adolescents with first-episode major depressive disorder (MDD) and 23 healthy counterparts. Participants observed animated motions wherein actions were directed toward animate (human-like) or inanimate (rock) targets, comprising social (giving) and kinematically matched control events (disposing, taking and acquiring).

RESULTS

Healthy controls (HCs) exhibited stronger central-parietal mu suppression in the lower sub-band during observation of socially interactive giving events than disposing events. In contrast, adolescents with MDD manifested no corresponding difference in mu suppression. Additionally, depressive adolescents demonstrated significantly higher occipital alpha power when viewing social (patient) than non-social (rock) targets, and this alpha power was significantly higher than that observed in HCs. Exploratory correlation analyses revealed that attenuated sensorimotor resonance of social interactions was significantly associated with increased severity of depressive symptoms in the MDD group.

CONCLUSIONS

Adolescents with first-episode depression showed difficulties in efficiently encoding social information and implicitly extracting the social-relational meaning of observed social interactions. These findings critically extend current understanding of neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social cognitive alterations in this population, and provide potential avenues for early screening and targeted interventions of social functioning impairment in adolescence.