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Elisabeth A.T. Evers

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2 papers
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2

YNICL Journal 2026 Journal Article

Depression vulnerability involves brain activity and connectivity changes consistent with cholinergic deviancy

  • Peter Stiers
  • Zoe Samara
  • Kyran J.R. Kuijpers
  • Elisabeth A.T. Evers
  • Johannes G. Ramaekers

Behavioral and imaging studies suggests that emotional biases in the perception of faces associated with major depression disorder (MD) may be embedded within a broader sensory processing deficit. Increased cortical acetylcholine in MD suggest that this deficit may be related to abnormal attention modulation of sensory areas. It is not clear, however, whether these problems are a manifestation of the disease or whether they precede symptom onset. To investigate this, we applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look for brain activity changes that participants with a family risk of MD (N = 30) shared with participant with MD (N = 28), compared to matched controls (N = 28). Participants were scanned while performing gender categorization of sad, happy, and neutral face pictures, as well as during a state of rest. Task-related activity changes, shared by participants at risk of and suffering from MD, were mostly seen in the posterior brain: increased activity in dorsal attention and visual association cortex, and decreased in lower visual areas. The changes did not differ between neutral faces and faces expressing an emotion. The at risk and MD participants additionally showed increased functional connectivity between the dorsal attention clusters and the lingual gyrus, and decreased connectivity with the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Lastly, they also had in common increased functional connectivity of magnocellular basal forebrain seeds with LOC and visual association cortex. These changes are consistent with an acetylcholine-mediated change in attention-guided sensory processing of all environmental events, which is discernable even before the first MD episode.

YNIMG Journal 2006 Journal Article

Acute tryptophan depletion reduces activation in the right hippocampus during encoding in an episodic memory task

  • Frederik M. van der Veen
  • Elisabeth A.T. Evers
  • Jeroen A. van Deursen
  • Nicolaas E.P. Deutz
  • Walter H. Backes
  • Jeroen A.J. Schmitt

Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD), a well-recognized method to lower central serotonin levels, was used to examine the effects of lower central serotonin levels on memory function in healthy males. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to examine changes in brain activation during the encoding and the retrieval phase of a visual verbal episodic memory task. ATD led to more positively rated words in the encoding phase and to poorer recognition of these positively rated words in the retrieval phase. Furthermore, encoding was accompanied by enhanced brain activation in occipital, middle and superior frontal, anterior and posterior cingulate and striatal areas. Retrieval attempt was accompanied by enhanced activation in the cuneus, inferior occipital gyrus and inferior and middle frontal areas. Retrieval success was accompanied by activation in an extensive network including frontal, parietal, temporal, cingulate, striatal and cerebellar areas. In the encoding phase ATD attenuated activation in the right hippocampus and ATD did not affect brain activity in the retrieval phase. These results show that serotonin is important in long term memory processes, and that serotonin acts on the encoding phase and not on the retrieval phase.

v2026.09.13