Abstract #3283

Pfleiderer B, Christ M, Konrad C, Hihn H, Michael N

Assessment of auditory cortical processing by fMRI of patients with depression vs. healthy controls pre and after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Responses to positive emotional stimuli (music) were compared with responses to neutral stimuli (sine tones). Patients prior ECT generally revealed a reduced response to music stimuli, which may correlate with the symptom of non-feeling. When presenting tones, medium depressed patients activated a compensatory network (associative visual network). Severely depressed patients were no longer capable of recruiting a compensatory network, instead presenting hyperactivation mainly of frontal brain areas. Depressives prior to ECT reveal altered auditory processing, which normalizes after successful ECT.