ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Neuroimaging

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1583482

First person state/psychological imagery modulates the orbital frontal gyrus and the putamen in individuals with depression

Provisionally accepted
Barbara TomasinoBarbara Tomasino1*Maria Chiara PianiMaria Chiara Piani2Eleonora MaggioniEleonora Maggioni3Carolina BoniventoCarolina Bonivento1Serena D ' AgostiniSerena D ' Agostini4Matteo BalestrieriMatteo Balestrieri4Paolo BrambillaPaolo Brambilla5
  • 1Eugenio Medea (IRCCS), Bosisio Parini, Italy
  • 2Translational Research Center, University Psychiatric Services, University of Bern, Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 3Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
  • 4asu fc, Udine, Italy
  • 5Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, Milano, Lombardy, Italy

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Patients with depression appear to imagine scenes preferentially from a 3rd person perspective as if they were observers. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging we asked patients with major depressive disorder (19, MDD) and healthy controls (19, HC) to imagine 1st person perspective state/psychological (vs. action) scenes. We found that the left superior frontal gyrus (orbital part) and the right putamen were differentially activated by the state/psychological (vs. action) imagery (vs. letter detection) in MDD individuals vs. HC.We suggest that imagery for state/psychological events increased activation in areas involved in selfrelated processing and personal perspective changes.

Keywords: State/psychological stimuli, emotion, imagery, Depression, fMRI

Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tomasino, Piani, Maggioni, Bonivento, Agostini, Balestrieri and Brambilla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Barbara Tomasino, Eugenio Medea (IRCCS), Bosisio Parini, Italy

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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