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Brain response patterns to economic inequity predict present and future depression indices

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, pages 748–756 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Widening economic inequity has been suggested to associate with depression. However, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of this link. Here, we demonstrate that functional magnetic resonance imaging activity patterns in the amygdala and hippocampus induced by the inequity between the self and other rewards during an economic game can predict participants’ present and future (measured one year later) depression indices. Such predictions were not possible using participant’s behavioural and socio-economic status measures. These findings suggest that sensitivity to economic inequity has a critical effect on human mood states, and the amygdala and hippocampus play a key role in individual differences in the effect.

Widening economic inequity has become an increasing concern for society1 and has been implicated as a source of several psychiatric diseases including depression2,3. Previous large-scale cohort-based studies (for example, the Whitehall Study4) have indicated a link between economic gaps and major depression5,6,7, where economic and material disadvantage are crucial in explaining depressive symptoms. Despite this importance, little is known about the neural mechanism that underlies the link between economic inequity and mood change. The revelation of such a mechanism would provide deeper understanding of depression and contribute to the development of preventative measures8.

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Fig. 1: Tasks and responses.
Fig. 2: Basic brain activity during the ultimatum game.
Fig. 3: Prediction of the present and one-year change in BDI scores.
Fig. 4: Prediction of the present BDI scores from absolute-value inequity responses.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), the Center of Innovation at Osaka University and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENNHI) (17H06314 and 26242087). We are grateful to S. Tada and T. Haji for technical assistance and P. Karagiannis for editing an early version of the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

    Toshiko Tanaka & Masahiko Haruno

  2. Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan

    Toshiko Tanaka & Masahiko Haruno

  3. NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Tokyo 150-8001, Japan

    Takao Yamamoto

Authors
  1. Toshiko Tanaka
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  2. Takao Yamamoto
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  3. Masahiko Haruno
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Contributions

M.H. and T.Y. designed the study. T.T. conducted the experiment. T.T. and M.H. analysed the data. T.T. and M.H. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Masahiko Haruno.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–9, Supplementary Tables 1–5, Supplementary Methods

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Tanaka, T., Yamamoto, T. & Haruno, M. Brain response patterns to economic inequity predict present and future depression indices. Nat Hum Behav 1, 748–756 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0207-1

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