Disorder- and emotional context-specific neurofunctional alterations during inhibitory control in generalized anxiety and major depressive disorder

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) are highly debilitating and often co-morbid disorders. The disorders exhibit partly overlapping dysregulations on the behavioral and neurofunctional level. The determination of disorder-specific behavioral and neurofunctional dysregulations may therefore promote neuro-mechanistic and diagnostic specificity. In order to determine disorder-specific alterations in the domain of emotion-cognition interactions the present study examined emotional context-specific inhibitory control in treatment-naïve MDD (n = 37) and GAD (n = 35) patients and healthy controls (n = 35). On the behavioral level MDD but not GAD exhibited impaired inhibitory control irrespective of emotional context. On the neural level, MDD-specific attenuated recruitment of inferior/medial parietal, posterior frontal, and mid-cingulate regions during inhibitory control were found during the negative context. GAD exhibited a stronger engagement of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex relative to MDD. Overall the findings from the present study suggest disorder- and emotional context-specific behavioral and neurofunctional inhibitory control dysregulations in major depression and may point to a depression-specific neuropathological and diagnostic marker.