Disrupted resting-state functional connectivity of the visual, default mode and salience networks associated with facial emotion recognition bias in postpartum depression

Postpartum depression (PPD) mothers exhibit a negative bias in children’s facial emotion recognition (FER), which are associated with poor mother–baby interaction. The underlying intrinsic functional brain areas and networks contributing to negative FER bias in PPD is less known. 34 PPD and 35 healthy postpartum women were enrolled. PPD mothers showed higher disengagement response to the Baby Cue Cards in emotional facial expression task (p<0.001), which were associated with Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) scores (r=0.419, p=0.012). Using group independent component analysis (ICA) of their resting-state fMRI data, patients with PPD exhibited significantly decreased intra-network functional connectivity (FC) in the right precuneus, the left posterior cingulate(PCC), within-network FC between PCC/bilateral inferior parietal lobule(IPL) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and increased intra-network FC in the right cuneus in Default Mode Network(DMN); increased intra-network FC in left insular, decreased FC in right triangular part of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFGtri) and right rolandic operculum in Salience Network(SN); decreased inter-network FC between visual network and DMN, between visual network and SN, between DMN and SN. The decreased FC in right IFGtri positively correlated with EDPS scores in PPD (r=0.338, p=0.023). The decreased FC between left calcarine sulcus in the visual network and bilateral insula/ dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the SN contributed to FER bias in PPD(r=0.372, p=0.028). This study provided evidence of PPD’s aberrant intra and inter-network FC within and among visual network, DMN and SN which constituted a functional reorganized architecture of FER process and might contribute to the negative FER bias to the infant in PPD patients.