Medial prefrontal aberrations in major depressive disorder revealed by cytoarchitectonically informed voxel-based morphometry

International audienceObjective: The heterogeneous human frontal pole has been identified as a node in the dysfunctional network of major depressive disorder. The contribution of the medial (socio-affective) versus lateral (cognitive) frontal pole to major depression pathogenesis is currently unclear. The authors performed morphometric comparison of the micro-structurally informed subdivisions of human frontal pole between depressed patients and comparison subjects using both uni-and multivariate statistics. Method: Multisite voxel-and region-based morphometric MRI analysis was conducted in 73 depressed patients and 73 matched comparison subjects without psychiatric history. Frontal pole volume was first compared between depressed patients and comparison subjects by subdivision-wise classical morphometric analysis. In a second approach, frontal pole volume was compared by subdivision-naive multivariate searchlight analysis based on support vector machines