Does resting-state connectivity reflect depressive rumination? A tale of two analyses

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is characterized by rumination. Prior research suggests that resting-state brain activation reflects rumination when depressed individuals are not task engaged. However, no study has directly tested this. Here we investigated whether resting-state epochs differ from induced ruminative states for healthy and depressed individuals. Most previous research on resting-state networks comes from seed-based analyses with the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). By contrast, we examined resting state connectivity by using the complete multivariate connectivity profile (i.e., connections across all brain nodes) and by comparing these results to seeded analyses. We find that unconstrained resting-state intervals differ from active rumination states in strength of connectivity and that overall connectivity was higher for healthy vs. depressed individuals. Relationships between connectivity and subjective mood (i.e., behavior) were strongly observed during induced rumination epochs. Furthermore, connectivity patterns that related to subjective mood were strikingly different for MDD and healthy control (HC) groups suggesting different mood regulation mechanisms.