ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2022
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Activation in Emotional Autobiographical Task in Depressed and Anxious College Students: An fNIRS Study.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- fNIRS in Emotional Appraisal and the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex: A Systematic Review.Revista de neurologia · 2025Pooled it
- Utility of Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in Major Depressive Disorder: A Systematic Review.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2026Review
- Anxiety Suppressed Prefrontal Cortex Brain Activity: Insights From a Large Sample of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Data.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Brain Activation in Response to Literature-Related Activities.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- High gamma EEG responses to emotional stimuli in virtual reality: insights from local activation and distributed characteristics.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Different activation in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left orbitofrontal cortex during autobiographical memory tasks is associated with depressive disorder with different levels of resilience: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- A free association semantic task for fNIRS-based perinatal depression assessment.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Exploring Neural Correlates between Anxiety and Inhibitory Ability: Evidence from Task-Based fNIRS.Depression and anxiety · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThe dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is strongly associated with mood symptoms. This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology to explore the features of brain neural activity in the dlPFC of anxious and depressed college students, during an emotional autobiographical memory task, and to understand the differences in brain cognitive mechanisms caused by anxiety and depression.
methodsA simple random sampling method was used to test 440 college students at a university with a healthy control group (HC, 220 participants), a pure depression group (PD, 92 participants), and a pure anxiety group (PA, 128 participants). The average oxyhemoglobin in the dlPFC of the subjects during the emotional autobiographical memory task was collected by a 53-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging device.
resultsThe activation of the left dlPFC (ch13) in the pure depression group was significantly higher than in the pure anxiety group. The activation of the right dlPFC (ch48) was significantly higher under positive emotions than under negative emotions. The interaction between emotion valence and group was marginally significant, and the activation of the right dlPFC (ch41) in the pure depression group was significantly higher under positive emotion than in negative emotion. The activation of the pure depression group under positive emotions was significantly higher than that of the pure anxiety group. In comparison, the activation of the pure depression group under negative emotions was significantly lower than that of the healthy control group. The results of correlation analysis showed that the activation of the left dlPFC (ch13) was significantly negatively correlated with anxiety in positive emotions, but the activation of the right dlPFC (ch34, ch42) was significantly positively correlated with anxiety in positive and negative emotions.
conclusionsThe right dlPFC was insensitive to positive emotions in college students with high-anxiety symptoms, whereas this region was insensitive to negative emotions in college students with high depressive symptoms, which might be one of the critical differences in the cognitive mechanisms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, left and right dlPFC activation correlated differently with anxiety. The higher the anxiety level, the lower the activation on the left side, and the higher the activation on the right side. The results suggested that anxiety might reduce the function of the left dlPFC.
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